Talk by Julius Hoffmann: “Introduction to Bilevel Optimization – What It Is & Why It Matters to You”

On July 2, 2026, we were pleased to welcome Julius Hoffmann, a former diploma student of our chair who now works at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), to our faculty for a talk on bilevel optimization. Bilevel optimization enables the modeling of hierarchical decision-making problems, such as those described in game theory particularly by Stackelberg games.

Starting from the fundamentals of operations research, the talk introduced key concepts of bilevel optimization and illustrated its relevance through various fields of application, including energy markets and supply chain management. A particular focus was placed on linear and mixed-integer bilevel problems, their properties, typical challenges in solving them, and basic solution methods.

Thank you very much for the interesting talk and the insights into this versatile field of research!