Upcoming Talks

Abstract: The past year has seen AI impact mathematical disciplines in profound, escalating, and revolutionary ways, giving rise to a new era of “proof abundance.” Optimization has featured prominently in this process, with new theoretical results emerging at a rapid pace. Other aspects of optimization research and practice, including software and applications, have also been impacted. In fact, AI has affected every aspect of our professional lives. This talk gives a high-level overview of these developments, with some examples drawn from my own limited experience, and some thoughts on how we, as a community, might deal with the challenges and opportunities posed by AI models.

Biography: Stephen Wright is a Vilas Research Professor and George B. Dantzig Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on computational optimization, including its theory, algorithms, software, and applications in data science and engineering. He is the coauthor of the widely used textbook Numerical Optimization (with Jorge Nocedal) and the author of Primal-Dual Interior-Point Methods. He has served as editor-in-chief of the SIAM Journal on Optimization and Mathematical Programming, Series B, as well as Chair of the Mathematical Optimization Society. His honors include the George B. Dantzig Prize (2024), the Khachiyan Prize (2020), and the NeurIPS Test of Time Award (2020). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (2024) and a SIAM Fellow (2011). He delivered a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 2026.