Dr. Laurent El Ghaoui

Biography

Laurent El Ghaoui is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. He graduated from Ecole Polytechnique in France in 1985 and earned his Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University in March 1990. He held a faculty position at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées in Paris from 1992 to 1999 and has also been involved with part-time teaching at Ecole Polytechnique and Université de Paris-I (La Sorbonne). Professor El Ghaoui's research focuses on robust convex optimization, decision-making under uncertainty, statistical estimation, air traffic management, bioinformatics, and finance. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in April 1999, became Acting Associate Professor, and obtained tenure in 2001. He took a leave from UC Berkeley to work for SAC Capital Management from July 2003 to 2006. Throughout his career, he has contributed to various prestigious publications and his work has been recognized with several awards, including the Bronze Medal in Engineering Sciences from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France in 1998.

Research Interests