Prashant Palkar

I am an Assistant Professor in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research group at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, India. Earlier, I was at the Chair of Discrete Mathematics, Optimization and Operations Research at the Institute of Mathematics, University of Augsburg, since April 01, 2021. During my PhD, I have primarily worked with Prof. Ashutosh Mahajan on theory and algorithms for Mixed-integer Nonlinear Programs. I also worked with Dr. Jeffrey Larson, Dr. Sven Leyffer and Dr. Stefan Wild (all three from Argonne National Laboratory) on Mixed-integer Derivative-free Optimization. One of my prime interests is to work on optimization solvers. I implement many of my research ideas in the open-source framework MINOTAUR. Prior to starting my PhD, I worked with Tata Steel Limited for about four years as a "Process Modelling and Visualization" expert in the long products business chain. I worked at multiple sites in Singapore, Thailand and India, collaborated with various clients and consultants for solving various optimization problems. I was also involved in designing and building end-to-end business software for users with embedded optimization algorithms and solvers, back-end databases and front-end GUIs.