At Lehigh ISE, a vibrant community of talented postdoctoral researchers, commonly referred to as postdocs, has been expanding our research capacity, adding dynamism and diversity to our academic environment. Many PhD graduates opt for a postdoc position before starting their independent careers to develop more research and gain experience. They are typically advised by local faculty members and become important members of their research groups, accelerating PhD theses and writing research grant proposals. They also contribute to the department enterprise doing things like teaching a course or organizing an event. Lehigh ISE postdocs have thus played an important role over the past 10 years, and this article pays them a very deserved tribute.
Lehigh ISE currently has four postdocs. Federico Battista joined our department in February 2023 and works with Prof. Ted Ralphs in the area of mixed-integer optimization, developing theoretical and computational methodologies. Federico's research aims to design and implement strong relaxations and efficient Branch-and-Cut frameworks for mixed-integer bilevel linear problems. Tommaso Giovannelli, who will join the University of Cincinnati as an assistant professor in August 2024, started his postdoc at Lehigh ISE in June 2021 after spending more than one year as a visiting scholar. Tommaso works with Prof. Luis Nunes Vicente on stochastic algorithms for bilevel and multi-objective problems for optimization and machine learning. Tommaso is also the chair of the 2023 and 2024 editions of MOPTA, the Lehigh ISE flagship conference. Xin Jiang, affiliated with the Program in the Foundations and Applications of Mathematical Optimization and Data Science, has been a postdoc at Lehigh ISE since August 2022. Xin's research interests include semidefinite programming and efficient and scalable optimization algorithms for various applications from engineering, machine learning, and data science. Nimita Shinde joined Lehigh ISE in June 2023 after serving as a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University. Nimita works with Prof. Daniel P. Robinson on the development of theoretical guarantees for low-dimensional sparse subspace clustering problems and practical algorithms for hyperplane clustering.
We also want to celebrate the accomplishments of past postdocs. Courtney Paquette, currently an assistant professor at McGill University, Canada, was a postdoc at Lehigh ISE from January 2018 to July 2018 under the supervision of Prof. Katya Scheinberg. Courtney’s research interests focus on designing and analyzing algorithms for large-scale optimization problems, motivated by applications in data science. Albert Berahas, assistant professor at the University of Michigan, was a postdoc at Lehigh ISE from September 2018 to August 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Katya Scheinberg, Prof. Frank E. Curtis, and Prof. Martin Takáč. Albert’s research interests focus on developing algorithms for solving large scale nonlinear optimization problems. Mike O’Neill, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was a postdoc at Lehigh ISE from 2020 to 2022 under the supervision of Prof. Frank E. Curtis. Mike’s research interests lie in the design, analysis, and implementation of continuous, nonlinear optimization methods. Gülçin Dinç Yalçın, assistant professor at Eskisehir Technical University, Turkey, was a postdoc at Lehigh ISE from June 2021 to June 2022 under the supervision of Prof. Frank E. Curtis. Gülçin’s research interests include non-smooth non-convex optimization and vehicle routing problems. Mengqi Hu, currently a postdoc at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was previously a postdoc at Lehigh ISE from February 2022 to July 2023 under the supervision of Prof. Xiu Yang. Mengqi’s research interests focus on uncertainty quantification. We conclude with Ka Wa Yip, currently a postdoc at Zhejiang Lab in China, who was affiliated with the Quantum Computing and Optimization Lab at Lehigh ISE from July to September 2021.
We look forward with enthusiasm to the continued impact of our postdocs in driving innovation, inspiring the next generation, and elevating our academic community to even greater heights.
