Amitabh Basu, a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, has been awarded the Egon Balas Prize by the Optimization Society of INFORMS, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. The INFORMS Optimization Society is the nation’s leading organization for optimization research.
The Egon Balas Prize is awarded annually to an individual for a body of contributions in the area of optimization.
Amitabh, an expert in the fields of optimization, discrete and combinatorial geometry, operations research, and convex analysis, focuses his work on developing methods to solve large-scale decision-making problems where a combination of discrete choices and non-discrete choices must be made to optimize a given objective. He incorporates techniques from convex geometry, the geometry of numbers, functional analysis, algebraic topology, and real algebraic geometry to reach technical breakthroughs in such optimization problems, and his research has practical applications in a number of fields, including operations research, astronomy, and data science.