Julian Hall
Contact details
- Email: jajhall@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
James Clerk Maxwell Building
Peter Guthrie Tait Road - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH9 3FD
Qualifications
Born in 1964 in Macclesfield, England. Educated at King's School Macclesfield (1974-83), New College Oxford (Mathematics BA First Class 1987) and the [then] Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Dundee (PhD 1992, supervisor Prof. Roger Fletcher). Employed by the University of Dundee as a research assistant (1988-90) and then by the University of Edinburgh in the School of Mathematics as a lecturer (1990-date).
Research summary
My main research interest is in developing algorithmic and computational techniques for solving large scale linear programming (LP) problems on both serial and parallel computers. For many years this was focused on the revised simplex method but, recently, I have switched my attention to work which will lead to the development of novel algorithms. A consequential research interest is the application of these techniques in other areas of computational optimization and linear algebra.
Knowledge exchange
Impact
In collaboration with current and former PhD students, Ivet Galabova, Michael Feldmeier and Qi Huangfu, I am managing the development of the high performance open-source software linear optimization software HiGHS. It solves large-scale sparse linear programming (LP), mixed-integer programming (MIP), and quadratic programming (QP) models. It is the world's best open-source linear optimization software, and has been adopted as the subproblem solver of choice by major modelling and mathematical software interfaces. The HiGHS interior point solver for linear programming has been championed as a game changer by the open-source energy systems planning community, and this has led to a "common good" funding campaign for its enhancement and development.