For her outstanding research in continuous optimization Gabriele Eichfelder, Professor for Mathematical Methods in Operations Research at the Institute of Mathematics at the TU Ilmenau, has been elected EUROPT Fellow 2024 by the EURO Working Group on Continuous Optimization (EUROPT). The fellowship, one of the highest international awards in the field of mathematical optimization, will be presented to her during the EUROPT conference at Lund University in Sweden from 26 to 28 June.
Awards
International recognition for research in mathematics: Prof. Gabriele Eichfelder elected EUROPT Fellow
Each year, EUROPT honors no more than one scientist for outstanding research in the field of continuous optimization. The selection is made by a large committee, including former fellows. In 2024, Gabriele Eichfelder, Professor at TU Ilmenau since 2012, will receive this award. Previous recipients include Prof. Coralia Cartis from the University of Oxford, Prof. Oliver Stein from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Prof. Monique Laurent from Tilburg University. Prof. Gabriele Eichfelder is only the second researcher from a German university among the 18 laureates so far.
Novel algorithms for solving problems in medical engineering or the energy sector
In her research, Gabriele Eichfelder deals with all aspects of mathematical optimization, a branch of applied mathematics that studies the theoretical properties of optimization problems and develops numerical methods for solving them with the help of computers. Among others, the group has developed novel optimization techniques that can be used to solve applied problems for instance in medical engineering, the energy sector, or mechanical engineering. These methods make it possible to consider several objective functions simultaneously, such as cost, quality, and energy consumption, and to include non-linear dependencies as well as discrete variables, such as yes-or-no decisions, and continuous variables, such as quantities, in the decision. Such multiple-objective optimization problems are referred to as multi-objective optimization, Professor Eichfelder’s main area of research, in which she has published numerous papers in leading international journals.
As EUROPT Fellow 2024, she has been invited to give the EUROPT Fellowship Lecture as a plenary talk at the EUROPT Conference, which aims to bring together researchers from both the theoretical and applied communities on continuous optimization and will be held at Lund University in Sweden from June 26 to 28. Also in June, the mathematician will be an invited plenary speaker at the French-German-Spanish Conference on Optimization FGS2024 in Gijón, Spain.
In addition to her appointment as a EUROPT Fellow, Prof. Eichfelder has recently been honored as a "successful woman in mathematics" by the Joint Committee on Women in the Mathematical Sciences (JCW), among others, of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) for her numerous research activities in mathematics.