Professor Stephen Boyd elected to NAE
Stephen P. Boyd, Samsung Professor of Engineering at the Stanford University School of Engineering, has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).
According to the NAE, membership honors outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice or education" and to the "pioneering of new and developing fields of technology," among other acts of professional distinction.
The NAE cited Boyd for his contributions in applying the methodology of convex optimization to machine learning, signal processing, circuit design and other applications.
In mathematical optimization, an algorithm is used to adjust variables to optimize an objective. Most optimization problems are difficult to solve, even with powerful computers. But convex optimization problems can be solved using special mathematical properties.
Boyd and colleagues have helped identify many specific applications in which convex optimization can be used to solve practical problems in areas such as statistical modeling and machine learning, automatic control, image processing, engineering design, supply chains and finance.
A Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Information Systems Laboratory at Stanford, Boyd holds courtesy appointments in the Departments of Management Science and Engineering and Computer Science, and is a member of the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering.
NAE membership is a select honor. The NAE has just 2,250 members in the United States and 214 foreign associates. With Boyd’s election the Stanford Engineering faculty now includes 110 members of this prestigious body.
