var sms = '<div id="sms_bulletin">  <div id="sms_header">  <div class="do_not_print" id="arrow_left"><a href="?next=-56"><img src="//www2.math.ethz.ch/smsjs/images/arrow_left.png"/></a></div><div class="do_not_print" id="arrow_right"><a href="?next=-54"><img src="//www2.math.ethz.ch/smsjs/images/arrow_right.png"/></a></div>    <div class="sms_title">      <span style="float: left;">SMS</span>      <span>SWISS MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY</span>      <span style="float: right;">SMG</span>    </div>    <div class="sms_info">      <span style="float: left; width: 250px;">Bulletin no. 5</span>      <span style="float: right; text-align:right; width: 250px;">3.7 - 7.7.2023</span>      <span style="text-align: center; display: block; width: 250px; margin: auto; position: relative;">Summer Break 2023</span>    </div>  </div>  <div></div>  <div id="sms_content">    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Monday, July 3      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_la"><a class="external" href="https://www.epfl.ch">EPF Lausanne</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?mode=AGENDA&height=600&wkst=2&bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&src=t36it03v52cus2detrvinlgk18%40group.calendar.google.com&color=%235F6B02&ctz=Europe%2FZurich">Groups, Arithmetic and Algebraic Geometry Seminar </a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"> Sam Payne (University of Texas at Austin)</div><div class="event_title">Title T.B.A.</div><div class="event_time">14:15 &bull; EPF Lausanne, Salle MA A1 12</div>        </div>        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_zh"><a class="external" href="https://ethz.ch">ETH Z&uuml;rich</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://math.ethz.ch/s/talks-in-financial-and-insurance-mathematics">Talks in Financial and Insurance Mathematics</a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"><a class="external" href="https://people.orie.cornell.edu/jdai/">Prof. Dr. Jim Dai (Cornell University and The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen)</a></div><div class="event_title"><a class="external" href="https://math.ethz.ch/imsf/courses/talks-in-imsf.html">Queueing Network Controls via Deep Reinforcement Learning</a> <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />Conservative update methods such as Trust Region policy optimization and Proximal policy optimization (PPO) have become the dominant reinforcement learning algorithms because of their ease of implementation and good practical performance. A conventional setup for notoriously difficult queueing network control problems is a Markov decision problem (MDP) that has three features: infinite state space, unbounded costs, and long-run average cost objective. We extend the theoretical framework of these conservative update methods for such MDP problems. The resulting PPO algorithm is tested on a parallel-server system and large-size multiclass queueing networks. The algorithm consistently generates control policies that outperform state-of-art heuristics in literature in a variety of load conditions from light to heavy traffic. These policies are demonstrated to be near-optimal when the optimal policy can be computed.  A key to the successes of our PPO algorithm is the use of three variance reduction techniques in estimating the relative value function via sampling. First, we use a discounted relative value function as an approximation of the relative value function. Second, we propose regenerative simulation to estimate the discounted relative value function. Finally, we incorporate the approximating martingale-process method into the regenerative estimator. This is joint work with Mark Gluzman at Meta.</div><div class="event_time">15:15 &bull; ETH Zentrum, R&auml;mistrasse 101, Z&uuml;rich, Building HG, Room G 43</div>        </div>        <div class="day_content_item normal"><div class="event_location uni_zh"><a class="external" href="https://ethz.ch">ETH Z&uuml;rich</a></div><div class="event_type"><a class="external" href="https://math.ethz.ch/s/daco-seminar">DACO Seminar</a></div><br /><div class="event_speaker"><a class="external" href="https://people.orie.cornell.edu/jdai/">Prof. Dr. Jim Dai (Cornell University and The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen)</a></div><div class="event_title"><a class="external" href="https://math.ethz.ch/imsf/courses/talks-in-imsf.html?s=fs23">Queueing Network Controls via Deep Reinforcement Learning (Financial and Insurance Mathematics seminar, cross-listed)</a> <span class="abstract-button do_not_print">abstract</span></div><div class="abstract-text" style="display: none"><strong>Abstract:</strong><br />For more information on this seminar see page ``Talks in Financial and Insurance Mathematics\'\' at https://math.ethz.ch/imsf/courses/talks-in-imsf.html?s=fs23</div><div class="event_time">15:15 &bull; ETH Zentrum, R&auml;mistrasse 101, Z&uuml;rich, Building HG, Room G 43</div>        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Tuesday, July 4      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item no_event">        No events scheduled today!        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Wednesday, July 5      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item no_event">        No events scheduled today!        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Thursday, July 6      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item no_event">        No events scheduled today!        </div>      </div>    </div>    <div class="day">      <div class="day_title">        Friday, July 7      </div>      <div class="day_content">        <div class="day_content_item no_event">        No events scheduled today!        </div>      </div>    </div>  </div>  <div id="sms_footer">    address: Alessandra Naldi Windler, Departement Mathematik, HG G 51.4, ETH Zurich, Raemistrasse 101, CH-8092 Zurich<br />    email: <a href="mailto:bulletin@math.ch">bulletin@math.ch</a> | phone: +41 44 632 3684 | url: <a href="https://math.ch">https://math.ch</a>    <br /><br /><img src="//www2.math.ethz.ch/smsjs/sms_logo.gif" width="150" alt="SMS/SMG Logo" title="SMS/SMG Logo" />  </div></div>';