Cornell doctoral candidate Ariel Goodwin has won the 2026 INFORMS Optimization Society Student Paper Prize for research extending mathematical optimization methods beyond conventional linear spaces.
The award recognizes an outstanding student-led paper and includes $3,000 and an invitation to present at the INFORMS Annual Meeting Nov. 1-4 in San Francisco, Cornell reported.
Extending familiar methods to nonlinear spaces
Goodwin’s paper is titled “Stochastic and Incremental Subgradient Methods for Convex Optimization on Hadamard Spaces.” His work examines how optimization algorithms can operate in curved, nonsmooth spaces where standard tools may not apply.
“The new subgradient algorithms we propose carry the many features that made them so desirable in their original linear setting: They are simple, easy to implement, and we can use them to solve a variety of geometric and statistical optimization problems,” Goodwin said.
He described the recognition as unexpected because the work addresses a specialized area of contemporary optimization.
Goodwin is advised by Adrian Lewis, a professor in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering in Cornell’s Duffield College of Engineering.
An academic career is the next goal
Goodwin is pursuing his doctorate through the Center for Applied Mathematics, an interdisciplinary program within Cornell Research that spans mathematics, operations research, computer science and engineering.
He credited the program’s broad course requirements and access to advisers across those fields with helping shape his approach.
Goodwin is seeking postdoctoral and faculty positions in applied mathematics and hopes to lead his own research program in mathematical optimization.
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