Michael Alan Saunders is a New Zealand American

numerical analyst Numerical may refer to: * Number * Numerical digit * Numerical analysis Numerical analysis is the study of algorithms that use numerical approximation (as opposed to symbolic computation, symbolic manipulations) for the problems of mathematical ...

and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

. He is a research professor of Management Science and Engineering at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. Saunders is known for his contributions to

numerical linear algebra Numerical linear algebra, sometimes called applied linear algebra, is the study of how matrix operations can be used to create computer algorithms which efficiently and accurately provide approximate answers to questions in continuous mathemati ...

and

numerical optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfiel ...

and has developed many widely used software packages, such as

MINOS Main injector neutrino oscillation search (MINOS) was a particle physics experiment designed to study the phenomena of neutrino oscillations, first discovered by a Super-Kamiokande (Super-K) experiment in 1998. Neutrinos produced by the NuMI ...

NPSOL NPSOL is a software package that performs numerical optimization. It solves nonlinear constrained problems using the sequential quadratic programming algorithm. It was written in Fortran by Philip Gill of UCSD and Walter Murray, Michael Saunders a ...

, and

SNOPT SNOPT, for Sparse Nonlinear OPTimizer, is a software package for solving large-scale nonlinear optimization problems written by Philip Gill, Walter Murray and Michael Saunders. SNOPT is mainly written in Fortran, but interfaces to C, C++, ...

. Saunders developed the MINRES method for the iterative solution of symmetric linear equation systems in 1975 together with Christopher Conway Paige.

Education and career

Saunders was born on in

Christchurch Christchurch (; ) is the largest city in the South Island and the List of cities in New Zealand, second-largest city by urban area population in New Zealand. Christchurch has an urban population of , and a metropolitan population of over hal ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. He received his B.Sc. in mathematics from

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury (UC; ; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was founded in 1873 as Canterbur ...

in 1965 and worked for two years as a scientific officer at the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) in New Zealand. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University in 1972, under the supervision of

Gene Golub Gene Howard Golub (February 29, 1932 – November 16, 2007), was an American numerical analyst who taught at Stanford University as Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and held a courtesy appointment in electrical engineering. Personal ...

. Saunders spent another two years at his old position with DSIR before joining the Systems Optimization Laboratory (SOL) in the Operations Research department at Stanford University. He was promoted to his current position in 1987 and made a faculty member in the Scientific Computing and Computational Mathematics (SCCM). He has authored over 100 scientific papers on a variety of topics, including many with his colleagues Philip Gill, Walter Murray, and Margaret Wright.

Honors and awards

Saunders is a highly cited researcher in both computer science and mathematics on the

ISI Web of Knowledge The Web of Science (WoS; previously known as Web of Knowledge) is a paid-access platform that provides (typically via the internet) access to multiple databases that provide reference and citation data from academic journals, conference proceedi ...

, an Honorary Fellow of the

Royal Society of New Zealand Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family or royalty Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal ...

, and a Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) fellow. He has won the Mathematical Programming Society (MPS) Beale-Orchard Hays Prize, and is a cowinner of the SIAM Linear Algebra Prize with Sou-Cheng Choi and Christopher Paige.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Saunders, Michael American computer scientists 1944 births Living people University of Canterbury alumni Stanford University alumni Stanford University faculty Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics New Zealand computer scientists New Zealand emigrants to the United States