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Nicolas Boumal
Assistant professor in mathematics at EPFL


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I joined the In­sti­tute of Math­e­mat­ics at EPFL on July 1st, 2020, where I run the chair of con­tin­u­ous op­ti­miza­tion OPTIM.

My group works on op­ti­miza­tion, sta­tis­ti­cal es­ti­ma­tion and nu­mer­i­cal analy­sis. Much of what we do is re­lated to non­con­vex op­ti­miza­tion and op­ti­miza­tion on man­i­folds. For the lat­ter, we de­velop a tool­box called Manopt and I wrote a book.

My 2021 ERC Start­ing Grant pro­ject GEOSYM runs from fall 2022 to 2027. Our goal is to har­ness geom­e­try, sym­me­try and sta­tis­tics in op­ti­miza­tion to tackle non­con­vex­ity. This is funded by SERI.

As of Jan. 1st, 2022, I am an as­so­ci­ate ed­i­tor for Math­e­mat­i­cal Pro­gram­ming.

The blog of my group is Race to the bot­tom.


Re­search top­ics:

  • Non­con­vex op­ti­miza­tion (com­plex­ity, struc­ture, global op­ti­mal­ity)
  • Op­ti­miza­tion on Rie­mann­ian man­i­folds
  • Semi­def­i­nite pro­grams and re­lax­ations in low-rank form
  • Low-rank op­ti­miza­tion
  • Sta­tis­ti­cal es­ti­ma­tion, bounds, no­tably under group ac­tions
  • Syn­chro­niza­tion (es­ti­ma­tion from pair­wise in­for­ma­tion)
  • Sin­gle par­ti­cle re­con­struc­tion in cryo-elec­tron mi­croscopy
  • curve fit­ting on man­i­folds


Group mem­bers, past and pre­sent:


Po­si­tions prior to EPFL:

  • In­struc­tor then as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor in the math­e­mat­ics de­part­ment at Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity. There, I also in­ter­acted closely with PACM (the pro­gram in ap­plied and com­pu­ta­tional math­e­mat­ics), es­pe­cially the group of Amit Singer. (Feb. 2016–June 2020);
  • Post­doc at Inria in Paris, af­fil­i­ated with the com­puter sci­ence de­part­ment of the Ecole Nor­male Supérieure with Alexan­dre d'As­pre­mont in the SIERRA team, work­ing on top­ics at the in­ter­sec­tion of op­ti­miza­tion and sta­tis­tics. (Oct. 2014–Jan. 2016);
  • Ph.D. stu­dent work­ing with Pierre-An­toine Absil and Vin­cent Blondel at UCLou­vain, in the de­part­ment of math­e­mat­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing. My dis­ser­ta­tion is about op­ti­miza­tion and es­ti­ma­tion on man­i­folds. (Oct. 2010–Sep. 2014).

Group picture of OPTIM chair at EPFL in April 2025
Last update: April 2, 2025.