Stephen P. Boyd is an American professor and control theorist. He is the Samsung Professor of Engineering, Professor in Electrical Engineering, and professor by courtesy in Computer Science and Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. He is also affiliated with Stanford's Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME).
In 2014, Boyd was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to engineering design and analysis via convex optimization.
Academic biography Education Boyd received an B.A. degree in mathematics, summa cum laude, from Harvard University in 1980, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985 under the supervision of Charles A. Desoer, S. Shankar Sastry and Leon Ong Chua. While at Berkeley, he was awarded a Hertz Fellowship (1982) and received the Hertz Thesis Prize (1985). Hertz Foundation. In 2006 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, and in 2017, from the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium.DHC, uclouvain.be, May 18, 2017.
Career Boyd joined the faculty of Stanford University's Electrical Engineering department in 1985. He regularly teaches undergraduate courses in applied linear algebra and machine learning. During his time at Stanford, he has been recognized with several teaching awards, including the 2016 Walter J. Gores Award for excellence in teaching, the school's highest teaching honor.Kathleen J. Sullivan, "Stanford's 2016 Cuthbertson, Dinkelspiel and Gores awards honor faculty, staff and students," Stanford News, June 7, 2016. He was awarded the 2017 IEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal, in recognition of his efforts in education in the theory and application of optimization, which has sparked the writing of improved linear algebra and convex optimization textbooks."Stephen P. Boyd accepts the IEEE James H. Mulligan, Jr. Education Medal – Honors Ceremony 2017," IEEE.tv, June 2, 2017. He has served as director of Stanford's Information Systems Laboratory,Stephen P. Boyd – Biography, Stanford.edu, January 9, 2018. and as a visiting professor at universities including City University of Hong Kong, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium.Stephen P. Boyd Executive Profile, Bloomberg.com. Accessed March 26, 2018.Stephen Boyd Biography, sse.cuhk.edu.cn, 2017. While at Stanford, he has consulted with numerous Silicon Valley tech companies, and founded one. His groups' CVXGEN software is used in SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy to guide their autonomous precision landing.NAE, The Bridge, Autonomous Precision Landing of Space Rockets, December 19, 2016, Author: Lars Blackmore.
Research Boyd's primary research interests are convex optimization, especially applications in control, signal processing, machine learning, and finance. His PhD dissertation was on Volterra series descriptions of nonlinear circuits and devices.Stephen P. Boyd, Volterra Series, University of California, Berkeley, 1985. His primary focus then turned to automatic control systems, where he focused on applying convex optimization, specifically linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), to a variety of control system analysis and synthesis problems.Kylie Jue, "Q&A: Professor Stephen Boyd talks election to National Academy of Engineering," Stanford Daily, February 24, 2014.
With Craig Barratt, he authored Linear Controller Design: Limits of Performance in 1991.Linear Controller Design – Limits of Performance, Stanford.edu. Retrieved March 26, 2018. In 1994, Boyd and Laurent El Ghaoui, Eric Feron, and Ragu Balakrishnan authored the book Linear Matrix Inequalities in System & Control Theory.Linear Matrix Inequalities in System and Control Theory, 1994. Around 1999, he and Lieven Vandenberghe developed a PhD-level course and wrote the book Convex Optimization to introduce and apply convex optimization to other fields.
In 2005 he and Michael Grant developed the MATLAB open source software package CVX, which makes it easy to specify and solve convex optimization problems.Guang-Ren Duan, LMIs in Control Systems: Analysis, Design and Applications, Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis Group, 2013, p. 86. This work earned them the 2012 Beale-Orchard-Hays Prize for Excellence in Computational Mathematical Programming."CVX wins the Beale-Orchard-Hays prize!" CVX Research, August 29, 2012. In 2012 he and Jacob Mattingley developed CVXGEN, which generates fast custom code for small, quadratic-programming-representable convex optimization problems, using an online interface. With minimal effort, it turns a mathematical problem description into a high-speed solver.CVXGEN: Code Generation for Convex Optimization, cvxgen.com, December 4, 2013.
Open-source software packages developed by his research group are widely used and include: CVXPY,"Citing CVXPY" CVXPY, accessed 10/08/20. SCS, first-order primal-dual cone solver for large problems"CSC Read Me", accessed 10/08/20. OSQP (with Oxford)"Citing OSQP", accessed 10/09/20. Boyd is ranked top 10 scientist in the field of Engineering and Technology.
Business and patents Boyd co-founded and served as chief scientist of analog synthesis and intellectual property provider Barcelona Design, from its 1999 founding until it folded in 2005."Costello's analog automation pioneer, Barcelona, to fold," EE Times, March 4, 2005."Barcelona Design Unveils Revolutionary Analog Circuit Solution," Design & Reuse, April 8, 2002. He serves in an advisory capacity for BlackRock, an investment management corporation;Robin Wigglesworth, "BlackRock bulks up research into artificial intelligence," Financial Times, February 19, 2018. Petuum, a machine learning platform for artificial intelligence;Aaron Aupperlee, "Pittsburgh AI company Petuum opens office in Silicon Valley," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, February 20, 2018. and H2O.ai, open source machine learning platform.Wendy Wong, "Start Off 2017 with Our Stanford Advisors," h2o.ai, January 9, 2017. He is also a co-inventor on 11 patents.Stephen P. Boyd, Justia Patents. Retrieved March 26, 2018. On his personal website, which is visited more than 1.6 million times per year, he makes available papers, books, software, lecture notes and lecture videos.
Awards and honors Hertz Foundation Fellow, 1980 AACC Donald P. Eckman Award, 1992 IEEE Fellow, 1999 John R. Ragazzini Award, 2003 Mathematical Optimization Society Beale-Orchard-Hays Award, 2012 IEEE Control Systems Award, 2013 Member, US National Academy of Engineering, inducted 2014 2014 INFORMS Saul Gass Expository Writing AwardStephen P. Boyd, informs.org. Accessed March 26, 2018. SIAM Fellow, 2015 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching at Stanford, 2016 INFORMS Fellow, 2016Stephen Boyd named as 2016 INFORMS Fellow, ee.stanford.edu, October 2016. IEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal, 2017 Foreign Member, Chinese Academy of Engineering, 2017Sarah Zheng, "Bill Gates given one of China's highest academic honours," South China Morning Post, November 27, 2017. 2019 Athanasios Papoulis Award, EURASIP"European Association for Signal Processing, Awards, Athanasios Papoulis" European Association for Signal Processing, accessed 10/08/20. Foreign Member, National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK), 2020 "IEEE CDC 2020", accessed 10/13/20.
Bibliography Introduction to Applied Linear Algebra - Vectors, Matrices, and Least Squares (Cambridge University Press, 2018) – with Lieven Vandenberghe (full book PDF by the authors) Convex Optimization (Cambridge University Press, 2004) – with Lieven Vandenberghe (full book PDF by the authors) Linear Matrix Inequalities in System and Control Theory (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 1994) – with Laurent El Ghaoui, Eric Feron and Vendataramanan Balakrishnan ( full book PDF by the copyright holders) Linear Controller Design: Limits of Performance (Prentice Hall, 1991) – with Craig H. Barratt ( full book PDF available from the authors)
References
External links
Personal site: Books, Stephen P. Boyd Stephen P. Boyd executive profile on Bloomberg.com