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Dimitri Panteli Bertsekas (born 1942,
Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates a ...
, el, Δημήτρης Παντελής Μπερτσεκάς) is an applied mathematician,
electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
, and
computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...
, a McAfee Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in
School of Engineering Engineering education is the activity of teaching knowledge and principles to the professional practice of engineering. It includes an initial education (bachelor's and/or master's degree), and any advanced education and specializations that ...
at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...
(MIT),
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
, and also a Fulton Professor of Computational Decision Making at Arizona State University, Tempe.


Biography

Bertsekas was born in
Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wi ...
and lived his childhood there. He studied for five years at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece and studied for about a year and a half at
The George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , presid ...
, Washington, D.C., where he obtained his
M.S. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...
in
electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...
in 1969, and for about two years at
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
, where he obtained his doctorate in system science in 1971. Prior to joining the MIT faculty in 1979, he taught for three years at the Engineering-Economic Systems Dept. of
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...
, and for five years at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. of the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Un ...
. In 2019, he was appointed a full-time professor at the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at
Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
, Tempe, while maintaining a research position at MIT. He is known for his research work, and for his nineteen textbooks and monographs in theoretical and algorithmic
optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...
and
control Control may refer to: Basic meanings Economics and business * Control (management), an element of management * Control, an element of management accounting * Comptroller (or controller), a senior financial officer in an organization * Controlli ...
, in
reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine ...
, and in
applied probability Applied probability is the application of probability theory to statistical problems and other scientific and engineering domains. Scope Much research involving probability is done under the auspices of applied probability. However, while such res ...
. His work ranges from theoretical/foundational work, to algorithmic analysis and design for optimization problems, and to applications such as
data communication Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or p ...
and transportation networks, and electric power generation. He is featured among the top 100 most cited computer science authors in the CiteSeer search engine academic database and digital library. He is also ranked within the top 40 scientists in the world (top 20 in the USA) in the field of Engineering and Technology, and also ranked within the top 50 scientists in the world (top 30 in the USA) in the field of Mathematics. In 1995, he co-founded a publishing company, Athena Scientific, that among others, publishes most of his books. In the late 1990s Bertsekas developed a strong interest in
digital photography Digital photography uses cameras containing arrays of electronic photodetectors interfaced to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to produce images focused by a lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The digitized image ...
. His photographs have been exhibited on several occasions at MIT.


Awards and honors

Bertsekas was awarded the
INFORMS The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger ...
1997 Prize for Research Excellence in the Interface Between
Operations Research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decis ...
and
Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
for his book "Neuro-Dynamic Programming" (co-authored with John N. Tsitsiklis); the 2000 Greek National Award for
Operations Research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decis ...
; and the 2001 ACC John R. Ragazzini Education Award for outstanding contributions to education. In 2001, he was elected to the US
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...
for "pioneering contributions to fundamental research, practice and education of
optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...
/
control theory Control theory is a field of mathematics that deals with the control system, control of dynamical systems in engineered processes and machines. The objective is to develop a model or algorithm governing the application of system inputs to drive ...
, and especially its application to data communication networks". In 2009, he was awarded the 2009 INFORMS Expository Writing Award for his ability to "communicate difficult mathematical concepts with unusual clarity, thereby reaching a broad audience across many disciplines." In 2014 he received the Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award from the
American Automatic Control Council The American Automatic Control Council (AACC) is an organization founded in 1957 for research in control theory. AACC is a member of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) and is an association of the control systems divisions of ...
, the Khachiyan Prize for life-time achievements in the area of optimization from the INFORMS Optimization Society. Also he received the 2015 Dantzig prize from SIAM and the Mathematical Optimization Society, the 2018 INFORMS John von Neumann Theory Prize (jointly with Tsitsiklis) for the books "Neuro-Dynamic Programming" and "Parallel and Distributed Algorithms", and the 2022
IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...
Control Systems Award for “fundamental contributions to the methodology of optimization and control”, and “outstanding monographs and textbooks”.


Selected publications


Textbooks

* ''Dynamic Programming and Optimal Control'' (1996) * ''Data Networks'' (1989, co-authored with
Robert G. Gallager Robert Gray Gallager (born May 29, 1931) is an American electrical engineer known for his work on information theory and communications networks. Gallager was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in 1979 for contributio ...
) * ''Nonlinear Programming'' (1996) * ''Introduction to Probability'' (2003, co-authored with John N. Tsitsiklis) * ''Convex Optimization Algorithms'' (2015)


Monographs

* "Stochastic Optimal Control: The Discrete-Time Case" (1978, co-authored with S. E. Shreve), a mathematically complex work, establishing the measure-theoretic foundations of dynamic programming and
stochastic control Stochastic control or stochastic optimal control is a sub field of control theory that deals with the existence of uncertainty either in observations or in the noise that drives the evolution of the system. The system designer assumes, in a Bayesi ...
. * "Constrained Optimization and Lagrange Multiplier Methods" (1982), the first monograph that addressed comprehensively the algorithmic convergence issues around augmented Lagrangian and sequential quadratic programming methods. * "Parallel and Distributed Computation: Numerical Methods" (1989, co-authored with John N. Tsitsiklis), which among others established the fundamental theoretical structures for the analysis of distributed asynchronous algorithms. * "Linear Network Optimization" (1991) and "Network Optimization: Continuous and Discrete Models" (1998), which among others discuss comprehensively the class of
auction algorithm The term "auction algorithm" Dimitri P. Bertsekas. "A distributed algorithm for the assignment problem"original paper, 1979 applies to several variations of a combinatorial optimization algorithm which solves assignment problems, and network optim ...
s for assignment and network flow optimization, developed by Bertsekas over a period of 20 years starting in 1979. * "Neuro-Dynamic Programming"(1996, co-authored with Tsitsiklis), which laid the theoretical foundations for suboptimal approximations of highly complex sequential decision-making problems. * "Convex Analysis and Optimization" (2003, co-authored with A. Nedic and A. Ozdaglar) and Convex Optimization Theory (2009), which provided a new line of development for optimization duality theory, a new connection between the theory of
Lagrange multipliers In mathematical optimization, the method of Lagrange multipliers is a strategy for finding the local maxima and minima of a function subject to equality constraints (i.e., subject to the condition that one or more equations have to be satisfied e ...
and nonsmooth analysis, and a comprehensive development of incremental
subgradient methods Subgradient methods are iterative methods for solving convex minimization problems. Originally developed by Naum Z. Shor and others in the 1960s and 1970s, subgradient methods are convergent when applied even to a non-differentiable objective func ...
. * "Abstract Dynamic Programming" (2013), which aims at a unified development of the core theory and algorithms of total cost sequential decision problems, based on the strong connections of the subject with fixed point theory. A 3rd edition of this monograph, which extends the framework for applications to sequential zero-sum games and minimax problems, was published in 2022. * "Reinforcement Learning and Optimal Control" (2019), which aims to explore the common boundary between dynamic programming/optimal control and artificial intelligence, and to form a bridge that is accessible by workers with background in either field. * "Rollout, Policy Iteration, and Distributed Reinforcement Learning" (2020), which focuses on the fundamental idea of policy iteration, its one iteration counterpart, rollout, and their distributed and multiagent implementations. Some of these methods have been the backbones for high-profile successes in games such as chess, Go, and backgammon. * “Lessons from AlphaZero for Optimal, Model Predictive, and Adaptive Control" (2022), which introduces a new conceptual framework for reinforcement learning, based on off-line training and on-line play algorithms, which are designed independently of each other but operate in synergy through the powerful mechanism of Newton's method.


See also

*
Neural network A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...
*
Reinforcement learning Reinforcement learning (RL) is an area of machine learning concerned with how intelligent agents ought to take actions in an environment in order to maximize the notion of cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine ...
*
Data network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are m ...
* List of convexity topics


References


External links


Publications
from
Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...
.
Publications
from
DBLP DBLP is a computer science bibliography website. Starting in 1993 at Universität Trier in Germany, it grew from a small collection of HTML files and became an organization hosting a database and logic programming bibliography site. Since Novem ...
.
Biography
from
National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

Bertsekas' home page at MITAthena ScientificLaboratory for Information and Control Systems, MITDepartment of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MITBiography of Dimitri Bertsekas
from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) {{DEFAULTSORT:Bertsekas, Dimitri Greek mathematicians Greek computer scientists Greek engineers Control theorists National Technical University of Athens alumni George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni MIT School of Engineering faculty Systems scientists American operations researchers Probability theorists 1942 births Living people Greek emigrants to the United States Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Richard E. Bellman Control Heritage Award recipients People from Athens