I am an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISEN) at Texas A&M University. My expertise is continuous optimization theory with an emphasis on methods for large-scale optimization and optimization over manifolds.

I am recruiting Ph.D. students. Please see the Ph.D. Positions page for details.

News

26/9/07 - Research and Group Update

A belated update: here are some highlights from the past few years.

Graduations

Congratulations to our recent Ph.D. graduates!

• Allan Gurwicz (2026) joined UniversalAGI as a Member of the Technical Staff.
• George Lobo (2026) joined Goldman Sachs as a Model Risk Quantitative Strategist.
• Leandro Maia (2025) joined Oregon State University as an Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering.
• Colton Mikes (2024), coadvised with Victoria Howle, joined Booz Allen Hamilton as a Staff Scientist.

Publications

The following are selected highlights; see the Publications page for the a lengthy and complete updated list.

• Mathematical Programming: Our 2026 paper on adaptive proximal ADMM develops algorithms with complexity guarantees for nonconvex optimization.
• SPE publications: Our 2025 SPE Journal paper uses survival analysis to assess long-term CO₂ storage risk. Related conference papers at ATCE 2024 and LACPEC 2026 explore risk assessment and optimization for geological CO₂ storage.

Awards

• 2026 Montague-CTE Scholars Award, Texas A&M University. This prestigious university-wide award recognizes tenure-track assistant professors for excellence in undergraduate teaching. I was one of nine faculty members selected in 2026, with each recipient receiving a $6,500 grant to support instructional innovation.
• 2025 Outstanding Teaching Award, Texas A&M University, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Funding

I serve as co-PI with Eduardo Gildin (PI) on a $103,310 grant from the Crisman Institute for Petroleum Research supporting survival analysis for CO₂ storage risk assessment during 2025–2026.

Positions Available

Ph.D. positions are available in optimization theory, with an emphasis on optimization over manifolds. Positions include full tuition, a stipend, and fringe benefits. Please see the Ph.D. Positions page for requirements and contact instructions.

23/9/01 - Move to Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University

I have moved across the great state of Texas to the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University. I am immensely grateful for my time at Texas Tech University and look forward to this new chapter.

23/2/01 - 2023 NSF CAREER Award

I have been granted a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award for my proposal, “CAREER: Fast Algorithms for Riemannian Optimization”, by the Algorithmic Foundations program at NSF.

22/9/01 - 2022 INFORMS Optimization Society Young Researcher Prize

Nam Ho-Nguyen (University of Sydney, Discipline of Business Analytics) and I won the 2022 INFORMS Optimization Society Young Researcher Prize for our Mathematics of Operations Research paper “Coordinate Descent Without Coordinates: Tangent Subspace Descent on Riemannian Manifolds”.