Professor Dan Garber from the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology has been awarded the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (ERC). These grants of approximately €2 million per researcher support pioneering R&D efforts. They are awarded to select researchers who have groundbreaking ideas, during the formative stages of their research teams and work plans.
Prof. Garber completed all his academic degrees at the Technion – a B.Sc. in electrical and computer engineering, an M.Sc. in computer science, and a Ph.D. in data and decision sciences. After earning his doctorate, he pursued postdoctoral research at Toyota Technological Institute in Chicago. He returned to the Technion as a faculty member in 2017.
Prof. Garber specializes in continuous optimization, a field bridging mathematics and computer science. “In my research group, we develop innovative and efficient algorithms for solving fundamental problems with applications in fields such as statistics and machine learning,” he explained. “Continuous optimization is a critical tool in many areas, including training neural networks in deep learning, with significant impacts across science and engineering.”
The ERC Consolidator Grant will support Prof. Garber’s ProFreeOpt project, which aims to address profound questions related to developing a new generation of highly efficient algorithms for solving a wide range of high-dimensional continuous optimization problems.