Minseok Ryu

Minseok Ryu wasn’t introduced to the field of optimization until he was an aerospace engineering graduate student at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology and says he used it successfully as a research tool before fully comprehending exactly how and why it works.

He found it to be “amazing” as it motivated him to study optimization algorithms and explore how they can better inform decision-making in pursuing advances in health care systems, energy systems and machine learning.

Today, after earning a doctoral degree in industrial and operations engineering at the University of Michigan and working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Argonne National Laboratory’s Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Ryu sees optimization helping to enable numerous societal benefits.

His knowledge of the field, combined with earlier learning experiences as a graduate research assistant with the Applied Mathematics and Plasma Physics Group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and research fellow at the Kellogg School of Management, will now inform his teaching as a new assistant professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, part of the Fulton Schools.

His work to date has earned him membership in leading professional engineering organizations, including the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, or INFORMS, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, or IEEE, the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, or IISE, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, or SIAM.

He has also chaired conference sessions for INFORMS, IISE and SIAM.

“I joined Arizona State University because I like the environment in which the industrial engineering and computer science programs are in the same school, which aligns with my research interests in operations research and machine learning,” Ryu says.

He will be teaching the Applied Deterministic Operations Research Models course, for which he says students will need knowledge of basic linear algebra.

 “I’m excited by the opportunities to teach and mentor students from diverse backgrounds,” Ryu says.

Meet the newest faculty members of the Fulton Schools of Engineering here.

Written by Joe Kullman