Justin Ward

Justin Ward is a Senior Lecturer in Optimisation at Queen Mary University of London's School of Mathematical Sciences and serves as Lead for Research Innovation and External Stakeholders Engagement at the Centre for Combinatorics, Algebra and Number Theory. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto. His research focuses on theoretical computer science, particularly approximation algorithms and combinatorial optimization, with an emphasis on submodular functions and models like local search and greedy algorithms.

Education: PhD in Computer Science (University of Toronto, 2012). Previous roles include Research Fellow at the University of Warwick (2012-2015) and Research Scientist at EPFL (2015-2017).

Research interests include algorithm design for discrete optimization problems, submodular maximization, and distributed computing. His work has led to significant contributions in approximation algorithms for k-means clustering and matroid-constrained optimization.

• Grants: EPSRC New Investigator Award (2019-2022).
• Teaching: Modules include Programming for Business Analytics and Linear Programming and Games.
• Service: Program committees for ICALP, APPROX, WADS, and ESA. Organized Highlights of Algorithms (HALG 2022) and Joint Two-Day Colloquiia in Combinatorics.

Justin’s work bridges theoretical foundations and practical algorithmic challenges, with applications in machine learning and distributed systems. His research emphasizes provable guarantees for computationally hard optimization problems.