Dr. Irv Lustig has joined our firm as an Optimization Principal, effective today. Dr. Lustig will serve as a leader of the Custom Optimization practice, which focuses on transforming business decision-making through the implementation of advanced analytics and optimization. For more than 30 years, Dr. Lustig has been an internationally recognized leader in Operations Research and Advanced Analytics. He started his career at Princeton University, where he was an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering and Operations Research from 1987-1993. He left academia to join CPLEX Optimization Inc., a software start-up creating and selling commercial optimization tools that quickly became the industry leader. In 1997 CPLEX was acquired by ILOG and Dr. Lustig served in roles of increasing responsibility, from Manager of Technical Services to Product Manager to Vice President of ILOG Direct. In 2008 ILOG was acquired by IBM as a flagship offering of its emerging "Smarter Planet" vision. At IBM Dr. Lustig contined to expand his career, serving in leadership roles on the product side and, most recently, for IBM Research investigating and developing state-of-the-art approaches for the next generation of optimization/business integration.
Dr. Lustig has authored more than 30 articles and scientific papers. He earned his PhD at Stanford University, where he studied under the renowned George Dantzig, who is credited with inventing the foundational algorithms for linear programming.