Don Goldfarb's Celebration

Biography

Professor Donald Goldfarb has been a distinguished faculty member of Columbia Engineering since 1982. His extensive service to the school includes terms as Interim Dean of the School in 2012-2013, Executive Vice Dean in 2011-2012, Acting Dean in 1994-95, and Chair of the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) department from 1984 to 2002.

 In 2023, Goldfarb was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to the development of algorithms and methodologies widely used in linear, quadratic, and nonlinear optimization.   

Goldfarb has published over 100 technical papers and served on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals. His editorial leadership includes being Editor-in-Chief of Mathematical Programming, Editor of the SIAM Journal on Optimization and the SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis, as well as Associate Editor of Operations Research and Mathematics of Computation. He has also been actively involved in the governance of the Mathematical Programming Society and the American Mathematical Society, as well as serving on numerous advisory committees for universities and government research agencies.

Before coming to Columbia, Goldfarb held positions as professor and acting chair in the Department of Computer Science at the City College of New York, visiting professor in the Department of Computer Science and at the School of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering at Cornell University, and assistant research scientist at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University.

Goldfarb earned a BChE from Cornell in 1963 and MA and PhD from Princeton in 1965 and 1966, respectively.