About

Andy Sun is an Affiliate Associate Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Dr. Sun has a wide range of interests in both theory and applications of deterministic optimization and optimization under uncertainty.

• On the deterministic side, Dr. Sun's recent research has focused on solving nonconvex optimization problems with a network structure, e.g. optimizing network flows with a nonconvex flow law, nonconvex quadratic programming on a graph, consensus optimization, and market matching. Dr. Sun has also been working on developing distributed algorithms for solving these nonconvex problems with convergence guarantees. Dr. Sun is also very interested in the problem of certifying the existence and uniqueness of solutions of polynomial systems with network structures using complex analysis and algebraic geometric methods. Dr. Sun has recently been interested in optimization with dynamical constraints, again with connection to network flow problems, where the flows are described by ODEs or PDEs.
• On the uncertainty side, Dr. Sun has developed the first efficient algorithm for solving two-stage robust optimization problems that are much faster than Benders decomposition, cutting plane methods for multistage robust linear optimization much scalable than duality approach, models for decision-dependent uncertainty, and recently a fast exact algorithm (SDDiP) for multistage stochastic integer programming. His team is working toward developing efficient algorithms for multistage robust and stochastic programs with integer decisions.
• On the application side, Dr. Sun has extensively worked on core optimization problems for electric power system operations and planning, and collaborated with major utility companies and system operators in the US. Dr. Sun's work on robust optimization for the Unit Commitment problem and strong convexification for optimal power flow problems have attracted substantial interests and follow-up research both in industry and academia.

Dr. Sun got his undergraduate degree from Tsinghua University in Beijing (major in Electronic Engineering), master degree in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT (working on analog computation and analog integrated circuit design), and doctoral degree in Operations Research from MIT. After PhD, Dr. Sun did a one-year postdoc at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY.