New Trends and Developments in Variational Analysis

Variational analysis has been well recognized as a rapidly growing and fruitful area in mathematics motivated mainly by the study of constrained optimization and equilibrium problems, while also applying perturbation ideas and variational principles to a broad class of problems and situations that may not be of a variational nature. One of the most characteristic features of modern variational analysis is the intrinsic presence of nonsmoothness, which naturally enters not only through the initial data of the problems under consideration but largely via variational principles and perturbation techniques applied to a variety of problems with even smooth data. Nonlinear systems and variational systems in applied sciences also give rise to nonsmooth structures and motivate the development of new forms of analysis that rely on generalized differentiation.