Curriculum Vitae (CV)

Home: 2671 Ross Rd, Palo Alto, CA 94303 
Mobile: (650) 464-3971
Work: Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4121
Office: Suite 060, Room M03, ICME, Huang Engineering Center, Stanford (650) 723-1875
Email: saunders@stanford.edu
Birth: January 6, 1944, Christchurch, New Zealand

1965 BSc (Hons), Mathematics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
1970 MS, Computer Science, Stanford University
1972 PhD, Computer Science, Stanford University

• 1965-67 Scientific Officer, Applied Mathematics Division, Dept of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Wellington, New Zealand
• 1967-72 Research Assistant and Teaching Assistant, Computer Science Dept, Stanford University; Graduate Study Leave (part salary) from DSIR
• 1972-74 Scientific Officer, Applied Mathematics Division, DSIR, Wellington, New Zealand
• 1975-76 Research Associate, Systems Optimization Laboratory, Dept of Operations Research, Stanford University
• 1977-78 Scientist, Applied Mathematics Division, DSIR, Wellington, New Zealand
• 1979-87 Senior Research Associate, Systems Optimization Laboratory, Dept of Operations Research, Stanford University
• 1987-2016 Professor (Research), Systems Optimization Laboratory, Depts of OR, EESOR, and Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University
• 2017-2019 Professor (Research) Emeritus, recalled to active duty, ICME and Management Science & Engineering, Stanford University
• 2020- Present Professor (Research) Emeritus, ICME and Management Science & Engineering, Stanford University

Other Employment

• 1972 (Oct) Visiting Research Fellow, Division of Numerical Analysis and Computing, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, England
• 1981 (May-Jun) Visiting Scholar, Dept of Mathematics, University of Linköping, Linköping, Sweden
• 1990 (Jul-Aug) Visiting Fellow, Dept of Operations Research, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
• 1995-96 Visiting Scholar, IBM Almaden Research Center (2 days/week)
• 1998 (Jul-Oct) Visiting Professor, Dept of Engineering Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand (taught Master's class on Nonlinear Optimization)
• 1999 (Aug) Visiting Professor, Institute of Mathematical Modelling (IMM), Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark
• 2000 (Jul) Visiting Professor, Dept of Mathematics and Physics, Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden
• 2001 (Aug) Visiting Professor, IMM, Technical University of Denmark

• 1962-64 New Zealand University National Scholarship
• 1965 New Zealand University Senior Scholarship
• 1968-71 New Zealand University Postgraduate Scholarship
• 1967, 1972 US Fulbright Travel Grant
• 1985 William Orchard-Hays Prize in Computational Mathematical Programming, Mathematical Programming Society, first recipient
• 1988 Visiting Scientist, Special Year on Numerical Linear Algebra, University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• 1990 Erskine Visiting Fellowship, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
• 1997 Inventor Recognition Award, Office of Technology Licensing, Stanford University
• 2001 IBM Faculty Partnership Award
• 2004 Best Paper award (with M. P. Friedlander), ICCOPT 1, RPI, NY
• 2004 ISI Highly Cited Researcher, Computer Science
• 2005 First Prize in software section (with H. H. Jin, M. W. Carter, and Y. Ye) Stanford-Berkeley Innovators' Challenge
• 2007 ISI Highly Cited Researcher, Mathematics
• 2007 Elected Hon FRSNZ (Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand)
• 2012 SIAM Linear Algebra Prize (with S.-C. Choi and C. C. Paige), awarded three-yearly by the SIAM Activity Group on Linear Algebra
• 2012 Inducted into Stanford University Invention Hall of Fame (Optimization software, with Philip Gill, Walter Murray, Bruce Murtagh, and Margaret Wright)
• 2013 SIAM Fellow
• 2024 INFORMS Senior Member
• 2024 AIAA Fellow
• 2025 ORSNZ President's Lifetime Achievement Award

Co-Principal Investigator with Walter Murray

• 1987-1989 AFOSR Annual budget $ 50,000
• 1988-1991 DOE Annual budget $316,000
• 1992-1995 DOE Annual budget $ 75,000
• 1987-1998 NSF Annual budget $100,000
• 2000-2002 NSF Annual budget $150,000
• 2003-2006 NSF Annual budget $172,000
• 1989-2001 ONR Annual budget $150,000
• 2002-2004 ONR Annual budget $163,000
• 2004-2007 ONR Annual budget $170,000
• 2007-2010 ONR Annual budget $180,000
• 2010-2013 ONR Annual budget $200,000

Co-Principal Investigator with Stephen Boyd and David Donoho

• 1998-2000 NSF Annual budget $133,000

Co-Principal Investigator with Yinyu Ye

• 2009-2012 DOE Annual budget $484,000 incl subcontracts to UCSD, Univ of Iceland Principal Investigator
• 2010-2011 NSF Annual budget $114,000
• 2012-2017 NIH Annual budget $373,000 incl subcontract to UCSD
• 2013-2016 ARO Annual budget $100,000
• 2016-2017 FRIC Annual budget $133,000 (Ford Research and Innovation Center)
• 2001 IBM Faculty Partnership Award, $20,000
• 2001-2003 General Motors, Work Systems Lab, faculty participant
• 2004 Research Gift, Robert Bosch Corp, $25,000
• 2005 Contract, Robert Bosch Corp, $108,500
• 2005 Research Gift, COMSOL Inc, $42,000
• 2005 Birdseed Funding, Stanford OTL, $15,000
• 2008 Stanford/KAUST AEA Agreement, $100,000
• 2008-2009 Member, Technical Area 4, AHPCRC, Stanford
• 2010-2012 Member, Technical Area 1, AHPCRC, Stanford

• ACM Association for Computing Machinery
• EUAS EU Academy of Sciences
• INFORMS Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
• MOS Mathematical Optimization Society
• NAG Numerical Algorithms Group Limited
• ORSNZ Operational Research Society of New Zealand
• SIAM Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
• SIAG SIAM Activity Group on Optimization
• SIGPLAN ACM Fortran Forum

• 1982-2004 Associate Editor, ACM TOMS (ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software)
• 1989-2002 Associate Editor, SIOPT (SIAM Journal on Optimization)
• 1999-present Associate Editor, OPTE (Optimization and Engineering)
• 2002-2012 Member, International Scienti c Advisory Board, NZIMA (New Zealand Institute of Mathematics and its Applications)
• 2010-2016 Associate Editor, NACO (Numerical Algebra, Control and Optimization)
• 1980 Co-organizer, Conference on Practical Optimization, Stanford University
• 1988 Member, Orchard-Hays Prize committee, Mathematical Programming Society
• 1995 Proposal Review panelist, NSF DMII, Production Systems and OR
• 1999 Organizer, Minisymposium, SIAM Conference on Optimization, Atlanta
• 2000 Member, Beale/Orchard-Hays Prize committee, Math. Programming Society
• 2001 Member, Dantzig Dissertation Prize committee, INFORMS
• 2002 Proposal Review panelist, NSF DMII, Operations Research
• 2002 Organizer, Minisymposium, SIAM Conference on Optimization, Toronto
• 2005 Organizer, Minisymposium, IFORS Triennial Conference, Honolulu
• 2005 Member, Student Paper Competition committee, IMACS
• 2006 Organizer, Minisymposium, ISMP Triennial Symposium, Rio de Janeiro
• 2007 Co-organizer, Stanford 50: Conference on State of the Art and Future Directions of Computational Mathematics and Numerical Computing, Stanford University
• 2007 Organizer, Minisymposium, INFORMS Annual Meeting, Seattle
• 2008 Co-organizer, Symposium on Gene Golub's Legacy: Matrix Computations {Foundation and Future, Stanford University, Mar 1
• 2008 Technical program committee, MELT08, First ACM International workshop on Mobile Entity Localization and Tracking in GPS-less Environments, San Francisco
• 2009 Proposal Review panelist, NSF DMS, Numerical Linear Algebra and Optimization
• 2009 Cluster Chair, ISMP, Chicago
• 2009 Minisymposium Organizer, SIAM Conf on Applied Linear Algebra, Monterey
• 2011 Advisory Council, LATNA, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
• 2012 Cluster Chair, ISMP, Berlin
• 2014 Co-organi

ACM TOMS, Acta Numerica 2005, AFOSR, AMC, AOAS, APMOD, APNUM, Applied Numerical Mathematics, Bioinformatics, BIT Numerical Mathematics, BSF, Cambridge University Press, CDC04, COAP, CSDA, Econometrics, ELSCAM, EPSRC (Britain), European J. of Operational Research, FCAR (Canadian Research Foundation), GRIS, Hindawi Scienti c Programming, Hindawi Shock and Vibration, HPSC, IEEE Signal Processing, IEEE TOIT, IJHPCA, IMA J. of Numerical Analysis, IJHPCA, IMACS student paper competition, Institute of Physics J. on Inverse Problems, INFORMS JOC, International J. Mathematics in OR, International Science Foundation, Inverse Problems, ISF, Italian Research and University Evaluation Agency, JCMDS, J. of Combinatorial Optimization, J. of Comp. and Applied Mathematics, J. of Comp. and Graphical Statistics, J. of Global Optimization, J. of Industrial and Management Optimization, JMAA, JOSC, JOTA, Johns Hopkins University Press, JPC, LAA, MATCOM, MELT08, MMOR, Mathematical Programming, MPC, Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, NAOIII, NAOIV, NAOV, NSERC, NSF, Numerical Algorithms, Numerische Mathematik, NUMA, NZFRST, NZ J. of Mathematics, NZIMA, OMP, OMS, OPTE, ORSA J. on Computing, Parallel Processing Letters, PLOS ONE, PNAS, POWTEC, Research Grants Council (Hong Kong), RSNZ, SIAM, SIAM Spotlights, SIGPRO, SIMAX, SIOPT, SIREV, SISC, SoftwareX, Springer, Swedish Research Council for Eng. Sciences, VQR (Italy), Wiley & Sons

• 1981-1986 General Electric
• 1990-2011 Barra
• 1989-2011 McDonnell-Douglas (then Boeing)
• 2000-2011 DemandTec (Science Advisory Board)
• 2007-2021 Cardinal Optimization Inc (Chief Scientist)
• 2011-2013 ProPlus Design Solutions (Technical Advisory Board)
• 2012-2013 Sodao Network Technology (Board)
• 2013-present Wellong Logistics Company (Chief Scientist)
• 2016-present Inovelli Inc (Chief Scientist)
• 2017-present ZhongTu Technology (Chief Scientist)
• 2020-present Khai Long Cayman L.P. (Partner)
• 2021-present ETAO (Advisory Board)

• 1997 EESOR 406 Colloquium, Winter and Spring

1. EESOR 408 Tutorial (3 students)

• 1998 EESOR 406 Colloquium, Winter

1. EESOR 408 Tutorial (2 students)
2. Master's class, Nonlinear Optimization, Engineering Science, University of Auckland,
3. New Zealand (12 students)

• 1999 EESOR 406 Colloquium, Winter

1. EESOR 408 Tutorial (1 student)

• 2000 MS&E 406 Colloquium, Winter and Spring

1. MS&E 408 Tutorial (1 student)

• 1989-2001 SCCM A liated Faculty member
• 2001-2003 SCCM Core Faculty member
• 2004-present ICME A liated Faculty member
• 2001-2004 CS 531 Linear Algebra Seminar
• 2005-2020 CME 510 Linear Algebra and Optimization Seminar
• 2003-2018 MS&E 318 Large-scale Numerical Optimization
• 2015 July Block course, Numerical Methods for Large-scale Optimization, USI Lugano
• 2016 March Block course, Large-scale Optimization, USI Lugano
• 2019 ICME 338 Large-scale Numerical Optimization, http://stanford.edu/class/cme338
• 2020-present College students, Introduction to MATLAB, InAmerica Education, New York, NY

• 1987 Engineer, R. Entriken
• 1988 Engineer, S. K. Eldersveld
• 1991 PhD co-principal advisor, S. K. Eldersveld
• 2002 PhD principal advisor, M. P. Friedlander, M. J. O'Sullivan, B. Kim
• 2003 PhD co-principal advisor, C.-M. Fransson
• 2005 PhD co-principal advisor, Z. Su, H. H. Jin
• 2006 PhD principal advisor, S.-C. Choi
• 2006 Postdoctoral advisor, H. H. Jin
• 2008 PhD co-principal advisor, C. Green
• 2008 PhD principal advisor, H. M. Huynh
• 2009 PhD principal advisor, D. F. Gleich, L. Tenenblat
• 2009-2011 Postdoctoral co-advisor, D. Kourounis
• 2010 PhD principal advisor, L. Deng, C. M. Maes
• 2011 PhD principal advisor, D. C.-L. Fong
• 2014 PhD principal advisor, X. Meng
• 2015 PhD principal advisor, S. Akle, Y. Sun
• 2016 PhD principal advisor, J. Yang
• 2016 MS advisor, Y. Park
• 2017 MS advisor, S. Kim
• 2018 PhD coadvisor, X. Suo, D. Ma
• 2019 PhD principal advisor, R. Estrin (Co-winner, ICME Gene Golub Thesis Award)
• 2019-2022 PhD coadvisor, S. Regev
• 1981 PhD external examiner, J. Eriksson, Linkoping University, Sweden
• 2000 PhD external examiner, M. Adlers, Linkoping University, Sweden
• 1979-2023 PhD reading committee member, 92 students
• 1987-2024 PhD defense committee member, 237 students

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[SJ1] I. Bongartz, A. R. Conn, N. I. M. Gould, M. A. Saunders, and Ph. L. Toint, A numerical comparison between the LANCELOT and MINOS packages for large-scale constrained optimization, Mathematical Programming, accepted 2000 subject to revision, 19 pp.

[SJ2] D. Kourounis, L. N. Gergidis, and M. A. Saunders, Compile-time symbolic differentiation using C++ expression templates, ACM Trans. Math. Softw., submitted 25 Feb 2008, revised 24 Mar 2009, 27 pp.

[SJ3] S. Akle, O. Dalal, R. M. T. Fleming, M. A. Saunders, N. A. Taheri, and Y. Ye, Existence of positive steady states for mass conserving mass-action chemical reaction networks with a single terminal-linkage class, J. Mathematical Biology, in revision, 2013, 15 pp.

[SJ4] German Preciat1, Agnieszka B. Wegrzyn1, Edinson Lucumi Moreno1, Cornelius C.W. Willacey, Jennifer Modamio, Fatima L. Monteiro, Diana El Assal, Alissa Schurink, Miguel A.P. Oliveira, Zhi Zhang, Ben Cousins, Hulda S. Haraldsd ottir, Siham Hachi, Susanne Zach, German Leparc, Yin Tat Lee, Bastian Hengerer, Santosh Vempala, Michael A. Saunders, Amy Harms1, Enrico Glaab, Jens C. Schwamborn, Ines Thiele, Thomas Hankemeier1† and Ronan M.T. Fleming, Mechanistic model-driven exometabolomic characterisation of human dopaminergic neuronal metabolism, Nature Metabolism, submitted 21 Mar 2023, 49 pp.

[SJ5] Na Huang, Yu-Hong Dai, Dominique Orban, and Michael A. Saunders, An inexact augmented Lagrangian algorithm for unsymmetric saddle-point systems, SIAM J. Sci. Comput., submitted 25 Apr 2024, 26 pp.

[SJ6] D. Ma, et al., An integrated deep learning framework for real-time air pollution control, Information Systems Research, submitted 29 Apr 2024, 45 pp.

[SJ7] A. Montoison, F. Pacaud, M. Saunders, S. Shin, and D. Orban, MadNCL: A GPU implementation of Algorithm NCL for large-scale, degenerate nonlinear programs SIAM J. Sci. Comput., submitted 7 Oct 2025, 19 pp.

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[U1] M. A. Saunders, Sparse least squares by conjugate gradients: a comparison of preconditioning methods, in J. F. Gentleman (ed.), Computer Science and Statistics: 12th Annual Symposium on the Interface, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 15{20 (1979).

[U2] P. E. Gill, W. Murray, and M. A. Saunders, Fortran software for optimization, Proceedings of the NSF Design, Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation Grantees Meeting, University of California, San Diego, CA, Jan 4{6, 1995, 2 pp.

[U3] P. E. Gill, W. Murray, and M. A. Saunders, SQP methods for large-scale optimization, Proceedings of the NSF Design, Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation Grantees Meeting, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, Jan 3{5, 1996, 2 pp.

[U4] P. E. Gill, W. Murray, and M. A. Saunders, SNOPT: A Fortran software package to solve large scale optimization problems, Proceedings of the NSF Design, Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation Grantees Meeting, Monterrey, Mexico, Jan 5{8, 1998, 2 pp.

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[S1] Co-author, licensed software: LSSOL, MINOS, NPSOL, QPOPT, SNOPT, SQOPT http://www.sbsi-sol-optimize.com

[S2] Co-author, licensed software: DNOPT http://ccom.ucsd.edu/~optimizers/solvers/dnopt/

[S3] Co-author, free software: Atomizer http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~atomizer

[S4] Co-author, free software: cgLanczos, LSMR, LSQR, LSRN, LUMOD, LUSOL, MINRES, minAres, MINRES-QLP, PDCO, SYMMLQ http://stanford.edu/group/SOL/software.html

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