Rate My Professor Samuel Burer

Samuel Burer is the Tippie Rollins Professor and Departmental Executive Officer in the Department of Business Analytics at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business. He earned his Ph.D. in Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization from the Georgia Institute of Technology in August 2001, advised by R.D.C. Monteiro, with a dissertation on new algorithmic approaches for semidefinite programming with applications to combinatorial optimization. He also holds a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Georgia in June 1997, graduating summa cum laude with highest honors as First Honor Graduate. Burer joined the University of Iowa in August 2001 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Management Sciences, advanced to Associate Professor in July 2007, and became Professor in the Department of Business Analytics in July 2012. He has held endowed positions including Henry B. Tippie Research Fellow (2012–2016), George Daly Professor (2016–2021), and Tippie Rollins Professor since 2021. Additional roles include Faculty Director of full-time and part-time Business Analytics graduate programs (2014–2020), Director of Graduate Studies for the Business Analytics Doctoral Program (2023–2025), and Faculty in Applied Mathematical and Computational Sciences since 2004. He served as visiting positions at Sapienza Università di Roma (2009) and Carnegie Mellon University (2007).

Burer's research specializes in mathematical optimization, developing theory and algorithms for challenging problems in operations research. His highly influential publications include 'A nonlinear programming algorithm for solving semidefinite programs via low-rank factorization' with R.D.C. Monteiro (Mathematical Programming, 2003), 'Non-convex mixed-integer nonlinear programming: A survey' with A.N. Letchford (2012), 'Local minima and convergence in low-rank semidefinite programming' with R.D.C. Monteiro (2005), 'On the copositive representation of binary and continuous nonconvex quadratic programs' (2009), and 'Ensemble Pruning Via Semi-definite Programming' (2006). He has received major awards such as the INFORMS Computing Society Prize (2020, with R.D.C. Monteiro), SIAM Optimization Test of Time Award (2023, with R.D.C. Monteiro), University of Iowa President and Provost Award for Teaching Excellence (2022), Collegiate Research Impact Award (2024), NSF CAREER award, and Optimization Prize for Young Researchers (2002). Burer serves as Area Editor for Operations Research (2020–present), Associate Editor for Mathematical Programming (2022–present), and previously for SIAM Journal on Optimization, Management Science, and others. He has delivered numerous invited talks, including a plenary at SIAM Conference on Optimization (2023) and presentations at INFORMS, MIT, and international universities.