Michel Goemans

Michel Goemans is the RSA Professor and Head of the Department of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with additional affiliations at MIT CSAIL and MIT ORC. Previously, he held the Leighton Family Professorship (2007-2017) and adjunct/visiting positions at the University of Waterloo, University of Louvain, and RIMS Kyoto.

His research focuses on combinatorial optimization, discrete algorithms, and approximation methods, with applications spanning network design, stochastic optimization, and algorithmic game theory. His publications consistently explore fundamental problems in mathematical programming and theoretical computer science.

Notable awards include:

• Leroy P. Steele Prize (2022)
• George B. Dantzig Prize (2021)
• Farkas Prize (2012)
• Fellowships: AMS, ACM, SIAM, Guggenheim, Sloan Foundation
• Doctor Honoris Causa (Université catholique de Louvain)

He advises doctoral candidates and postdocs, with prominent former students including David Williamson (Cornell), Jon Kleinberg (Cornell), and Aleksander Madry (MIT). Research is primarily funded by NSF and ONR grants.