Dr. Bixby has over thirty years of experience in the optimization software business. Prior to his role as Gurobi CSO, Dr. Bixby held the Gurobi CEO role since co-founding Gurobi in 2008. Prior to Gurobi, Dr. Bixby co-founded CPLEX Optimization, Inc. in 1987. CPLEX was acquired by ILOG, Inc., in 1997, after which he served on the ILOG Board of Directors, was manager of the ILOG CPLEX Development Team, President of the ILOG Technical Advisory Board, and General Manager of ILOG’s Semiconductor Business Division. Dr. Robert Bixby has a BS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD in Operations Research from Cornell University. He has held academic positions at the University of Kentucky, Northwestern University, and Rice University. He is currently Noah Harding Professor Emeritus of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice, and Research Professor of Management in Rice’s Jones School of Management. Dr. Bixby has published over fifty journal articles, and is an acknowledged expert on the computational aspects of linear and integer programming. He has won several awards for his work in optimization, including the Beale-Orchard-Hays Prize of the Mathematical Programming Society, and the INFORMS Impact and Frederick W. Lanchester Prizes. In 1997 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to the theory and practice of optimization.