Guanghui Lan

Guanghui (George) Lan is the A. Russell Chandler III Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He concurrently serves as Associate Director of Machine Learning and Data Science at Georgia Tech’s Center for Machine Learning.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (2009)

Research spans three tightly connected pillars:

1. Theory & Algorithms: stochastic optimization, nonlinear programming, first-order and primal-dual methods.
2. Machine Learning & Data Science: reinforcement learning, policy optimization, minimax formulations, robust learning under uncertainty.
3. Applications: healthcare decision-making, sustainable chemical recycling (PET glycolysis), and resilient biorefining.

His 2024–2025 articles reveal a clear trend toward model-free and sampling-efficient algorithms for large-scale or constrained problems, with a parallel emphasis on real-world sustainability applications such as waste-plastic recycling and biorefinery control.

Scientific Honors:

• INFORMS Frederick W. Lanchester Prize (2023)
• INFORMS Computing Society Prize (2022)
• NSF CAREER Award (2013)
• Multiple best-paper and finalist distinctions from INFORMS and the Mathematical Optimization Society

Grants & Editorial Service:

• Funding from NSF, ONR, ARO, USDA, AFOSR, AHA
• Associate Editor: Computational Optimization and Applications (2014–), Mathematical Programming (2016–), SIAM Journal on Optimization (2016–), Operations Research (2023–)

Dr. Lan directs algorithmic development within Georgia Tech’s Center for Machine Learning and advises a vibrant group of Ph.D. students and post-docs working at the intersection of optimization and machine learning.