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I was born in Ajloun-Jordan. I earned both my BSc and MSc in Mathematics at Yarmouk University in 2005 and 2007, respectively. In 2011, I earned my Ph.D. in Mathematics at Washington State University (WSU) with a specialization in Mathematical Optimization under the supervision of Professor K. A. Ariyawansa. At WSU, I took several graduate-level math courses including those in continuous and discrete optimization. This includes linear optimization, nonlinear optimization, integer and combinatorial optimization, and network optimization. These courses introduced me to many interesting optimization problems, and the challenge of thinking that I found in these problems attracted me to choose optimization as a specialty.
Immediately after graduation, I worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on a research project on Dynamic Optimization in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of California Davis. I joined the Department of Mathematics at the University of Jordan as an Assistant Professor in 2013, was tenured and promoted to Associate Professor in 2016, and promoted to Full Professor in 2021. The University of Jordan is Jordan's oldest public university. Immediately upon my promotion, I was selected to become the head of our department (in office from Aug. 2016 to Aug. 2018). This has been the greatest experience and the finest skills of my professional life so far! Our department is the only PhD-granting mathematics department in Jordan and contains 37 full-time faculty members. As the head of the department, I was responsible for all department affairs including teaching, research, undergraduate and graduate studies, hiring new faculty members, funding, etc.
As a math professor, I teach almost all undergraduate courses in mathematics and all graduate courses in optimization and applied analysis. In the past 14 years, from 2008 till 201, I taught math courses at WSU, University of Jordan, Ohio State University, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, University of Colorado Denver, Yarmouk University, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, and University of Tabouk. My responsibilities included all aspects of teaching the course, including developing course materials/syllabus, creating specific assignments, preparing slide lectures, writing and administering exams, performing classroom instruction, lecturing, and grading. In addition, at the University of Jordan, I have strengthened our undergraduate and graduate programs in the area of optimization by establishing some new interesting optimization courses to our departmental curriculum. These courses are Integer and Combinatorial Optimization, and Modern Convex Optimization.
My particular research area is Convex Optimization. I am interested in developing algorithms and investigating applications for convex cone programming. This research touches on many fields, including military, risk, finance, portfolio optimization, data science, and machine learning. My research papers have been published in the field's prestigious journals such as Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Computational Optimization and Applications, Optimization (A Journal of Mathematical Programming and Operations Research), Optimization Letters, Numerical Functional Analysis and Optimization, Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, Operators and Matrices, IEEE Access, Applied Mathematics and Computations, Applied Mathematical Modeling, and others.
I have given several invited and contributed research talks on optimization at international conferences in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, Italy, Singapore, Oman, and Jordan. I have served as a reviewer for some journals, this includes but not limited to: Mathematical Reviews, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Journal of Global Optimization, Optimization Methods and Software, Optimization and Engineering, and Optimization Letters. I am now supervising five Ph.D. students and some undergraduates. I have also been the principal investigator of a funded research project in optimization. All of this enables me to keep up to date with important developments in my field.
I am now in the USA and am on a sabbatical leave from the University of Jordan. In 2019, I joined the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus as a Visiting Associate Professor, where I am teaching Discrete Structures and Algorithms and collaborating with some colleagues and some students at OSU on some research projects. I am also writing a book titled “Combinatorial and Algorithmic Mathematics”.
B. M. ALZALG
Columbus, Ohio
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