Quite often optimization models in real life arise from situations where derivatives cannot be used, either because they are numerically inacurate -due to noise- or because function values comes from simulation packages (or software packages), which makes impractical any derivative approximation. The author has been working on this subject for several years and will present recent advances that includes optimization models with nonlinear constraints and integer variables.
Ubaldo was born in Caracas, Venezuela and is married to "Eva García". He has 3 children and one grandson. He got his title as Engineer in Communication and Electronic at the "Universidad Central de Venezuela" in 1958. He obtained his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1973 in the area of "Numerical Optimization". Since then he has taken over different topics within the Optimization area with significant contributions. He has been working at the "Universidad de Vigo" since 1995 and his research is actually focused in the area of DFO (Derivative free optimization) with emphasis in the development of general algorithms that could be applied for solving "Engineering models".