Prof. Ben-Tal's research work is mainly in the area of nonlinear optimization. He published over 100 papers and 2 books (a third is forthcoming). His theoretical work is concerned with extremum principles for problems in a general setting, with regard to the underlying decision space, and the underlying smoothness of the functionals. He was among the first to develop a comprehensive theory of second-order optimality conditions for nondifferential problems.

Prof. Ben-Tal is also involved in research in stochastic mathematical programming. He introduced the concept of entropic-penalty for problems with randomness in the constraints, and developed a duality theory which established a link between stochastic programming and the Expected Utility principle in economics. Recently he developed, together with Prof. A. Nemirovski, the Robust Optimization methodology. The focus of Prof. Ben-Tal's work in recent years is in computational methods for solving large-scale continuous optimization problems. The algorithms he develops are used in designing optimally complex engineering structures, water distribution networks, and techniques for medical image reconstruction. The above projects are carried out in the MINERVA Optimization Center, a 1 million euro endowed research center headed by Prof. Ben-Tal.

Prof. Ben-Tal was a member of the International Council of the Mathematical Programming Society. He served as Area Editor of the journal Mathematics of Operations Research, and Associae Editor for Math. Programming and SIAM Optimization.He is currently a member of the Editorial Board of the journals Convex Analysis,J.Optimization and Engineering and European J. of Oprations Research.. He received Awards of Excellence from the Technion both for research and for teaching. In 2007 Prof. Ben-Tal was awarded the EURO Gold Medal-the highesr distinction for Operations Research within Europe.

Convex analysis, nonsmooth optimization

Robust optimization

Algorithms for large-scale nonlinear programming

Optimal engineering design

Medical Imaging

• Ben-Israel, A., Ben-Tal, A. and Zlobec, S. (1981), Optimality in Nonlinear Programming: A Feasible Directions Approach, Wiley-Interscience, New York.

• Ben-Tal, A. and Nemirovski, A. (2001), Lectures on Modern Convex Optimization: Analysis, Algorithms; Engineering Applications. SIAM-MPS Series in Optimization.

• Ben-Tal, A. and Zowe, J. (1981), A unified approach of optimality conditions for extremum problems in topological vector spaces, Mathematical Programming Studies 19, 39--76.

• Ben-Tal, A. (1985), The entropic penalty approach to stochastic programming, Mathematics of Operations Research 10, 263--279.

• Ben-Tal, A., Borwein, M.M. and Teboulle, M. (1988), A dual approach to multidimensional $L_p$-spectral estimation problems, SIAM J. Control and Optimization 26, 985--996.

• Ben-Tal, A. and Bendsoe, M.P. (1993), A new method for optimal truss topology design, SIAM J. Optimization 13 (2).

• Ben-Tal, A., Kocvara, M., Nemirovski, A. and Zowe, J. (1999), Free material design via semidefinite programming, the multi-load case with contact conditions, SIAM J. Optimization , 9, 813-832.

• Ben-Tal, A. and Nemirovski, A. (2000), Structural design via semidefinite programming, Handbook on Semidefinite Programming, Kluwer, Boston, 443-467.

• Aharon Ben-Tal, Conic and Robust Optimization, Lecture Notes.

Return to the Faculty Members List	Return to the main page