Jean-Bernard Lasserre

Jean-Bernard Lasserre is a Senior Researcher at LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse, France, and a member of the Institute of Mathematics at the University of Toulouse. He earned his PhD (1978) and Doctorat d'Etat (1984) from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, with prior academic training from ENSIMAG (Grenoble). He has held visiting positions at UC Berkeley’s Electrical Engineering Dept. (1978-79, 1985-86) via INRIA and NSF fellowships, and shorter visits at institutions like MIT, Stanford, MSRI, and Cinvestav-IPN (Mexico).

• Affiliations:
  • LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse (since 1980)
  • Institute of Mathematics (IMT), University of Toulouse (member)

His research spans Applied Mathematics, Probability, and Optimization, with pioneering work in Markov Control Processes, Semi-Definite Programming, and the Moment-SOS approach for global optimization. He has developed computational methods for integrating functions on convex polytopes, invariant probability measures for Markov chains, and inverse problems in computational geometry. His work bridges continuous and discrete optimization, impacting robotics (e.g., NUROA algorithm), power systems (e.g., Optimal Power Flow Problem), and quantum computing.

Key scientific awards include the John von Neumann Theory Prize (2015), Khachiyan Prize (2015), Lagrange Prize in Continuous Optimization (2009), SIAM Fellowship (2014), and an ERC Advanced Grant (2014). He has served as Associate Editor for journals like IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and SIAM Journal on Optimization, and co-developed software tools such as GloptiPoly and POCP for polynomial optimization and optimal control.