Michel Xavier Goemans (born December 1964) is a Belgian-

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematics, mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and Industrial sector, industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a ...

and the RSA Professor of Mathematics at

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

working in

discrete mathematics Discrete mathematics is the study of mathematical structures that can be considered "discrete" (in a way analogous to discrete variables, having a bijection with the set of natural numbers) rather than "continuous" (analogously to continuous f ...

and

combinatorial optimization Combinatorial optimization is a subfield of mathematical optimization that consists of finding an optimal object from a finite set of objects, where the set of feasible solutions is discrete or can be reduced to a discrete set. Typical combina ...

CSAIL Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

and MIT Operations Research Center.

Career

Goemans earned his doctorate in 1990 from MIT. Goemans is the "Leighton Family Professor" of Applied Mathematics at MIT and an adjunct professor at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

. He was also a professor at the

University of Louvain UCLouvain (or Université catholique de Louvain , French for Catholic University of Louvain, officially in English the University of Louvain) is Belgium's largest French-speaking university and one of the oldest in Europe (originally establishe ...

and a visiting professor at the RIMS of the

University of Kyoto , or , is a national research university in Kyoto, Japan. Founded in 1897, it is one of the former Imperial Universities and the second oldest university in Japan. The university has ten undergraduate faculties, eighteen graduate schools, and t ...

Recognition

In 1991 he received the A.W. Tucker Prize. From 1995 to 1997 he was a Sloan Research Fellow. In 1998 he was an Invited Speaker of the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

in Berlin. For the academic year 2007–2008 he

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon individuals who have demonstrated d ...

. Goemans is a

Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned or professional societies, the term refers ...

(2008), a fellow of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

(2012), and a fellow of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific soci ...

(2013). In 2000 he was awarded the MOS-AMS

Fulkerson Prize The Fulkerson Prize for outstanding papers in the area of discrete mathematics is sponsored jointly by the Mathematical Optimization Society (MOS) and the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Up to three awards of $1,500 each are presented at e ...

for joint work with

David P. Williamson David Paul Williamson is a professor of operations research at Cornell University, and the editor-in-chief of the ''SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics''. He earned his Ph.D. in 1993 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supe ...

on the

semidefinite programming Semidefinite programming (SDP) is a subfield of mathematical programming concerned with the optimization of a linear objective function (a user-specified function that the user wants to minimize or maximize) over the intersection of the cone of po ...

approximation algorithm for the

maximum cut In a graph, a maximum cut is a cut whose size is at least the size of any other cut. That is, it is a partition of the graph's vertices into two complementary sets and , such that the number of edges between and is as large as possible. ...

problem. In 2012 Goemans was awarded the Farkas Prize. In 2022 he received the AMS Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research.AMS Steele Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research 2022
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Personal life

His hobby is sailing. Goemans has Belgian and US citizenship.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goemans, Michel 1964 births Living people 20th-century Belgian mathematicians Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Theoretical computer scientists Combinatorialists 21st-century Belgian mathematicians Belgian emigrants to the United States 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians