Benjamin Grimmer, an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, has been awarded the 2025 Young Researchers Prize by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) Optimization Society.
The Young Researchers Prize is awarded annually to one or more early-career researchers for an outstanding paper in optimization published in, or accepted by, a refereed professional journal.
Grimmer, who is also a member of the Mathematical Institute for Data Science (MINDS) and the Data Science and AI Institute, was recognized for his paper “Provably Faster Gradient Descent via Long Steps” published in the SIAM Journal on Optimization.
Grimmer’s research focuses on the design and analysis of algorithms for continuous optimization, with applications ranging from classical methods such as gradient descent and conic optimization to modern machine learning challenges involving stochastic, nonconvex, non–smooth, and adversarial problems.
He will present his research at the INFORMS 2025 Annual Meeting in October.