In this talk I will present two recent findings concerning the preconditioning of elliptic problems. The first result concerns preconditioning of elliptic problems with variable coefficient K by an inverse Laplacian. Here we show that there is a close relationship between the eigenvalues of the preconditioned system and K. 
The second results concern the problem on mixed form where K approaches zero. Here, we show a uniform inf-sup condition and corresponding robust preconditioning. 

Standard quadratic programs have numerous applications and play an important role in copositivity detection. We consider reformulating a standard quadratic program as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) problem. We propose alternative MILP reformulations that exploit the specific structure of standard quadratic programs. We report extensive computational results on various classes of instances. Our experiments reveal that our MILP reformulations significantly outperform other global solution approaches. 
This is joint work with Jacek Gondzio.

The derivation of first-order nonlinear transport PDEs via interacting particles subject only to deterministic forces is crucial in the socio-biological sciences and in the real world applications (e.g. vehicular traffic, pedestrian movements), as it provides a rigorous justification to a "continuum" description in situations more naturally described by a discrete approach. This talk will collect recent results on the derivation of entropy solutions to scalar conservation laws (arising e.g. in traffic flow) as many particle limits of "follow-the-leader"-type ODEs, including extensions to the case with Dirichlet boundary conditions and to the Hughes model for pedestrian movements (the results involve S. Fagioli, M. D. Rosini, G. Russo). I will then describe a recent extension of this approach to nonlocal transport equations with a "nonlinear mobility" modelling prevention of overcrowding for high densities (in collaboration with S. Fagioli and E. Radici).