IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO.

1, FEBRUARY 2012 39
Tight Mixed Integer Linear Programming
Formulations for the Unit Commitment Problem
James Ostrowski, Member, IEEE, Miguel F. Anjos, Member, IEEE, and Anthony Vannelli, Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper examines the polytope of feasible power
generation schedules in the unit commitment (UC) problem. We
provide computational results comparing formulations for the UC
problem commonly found in the literature. We introduce a new
class of inequalities, giving a tighter description of feasible oper-
ating schedules for generators. Computational results show that
these inequalities can signicantly reduce overall solution times.
Index TermsInteger-programming, optimization, unit com-
mitment.
NOTATION
Parameters
Feasible region for production schedules for
generator at time .
Coefcients for the startup cost function for
generator .
Number of hours generator is required to
be off at the start of the planning period (h).
Demand at time period (MW).
Minimum number of time periods required
for generator to be off before it can be
turned on (h).
unless exceeds the planning horizon,
in which case is .
Set of generators.
Cost of turning on generator after it has
been inactive for time periods ($).
unless exceeds the planning horizon,
in which case is .
Maximum power output of generator
(MW).
Minimum power output of generator
(MW).
Spinning reserve at time period (MW).
Manuscript received March 18, 2010; revised July 15, 2010, October 08,
2010, December 28, 2010, and April 01, 2011; accepted July 07, 2011. Date
of publication August 15, 2011; date of current version January 20, 2012. This
work was supported in part by MITACS, NSERC, and the Humboldt Founda-
tion. Paper no. TPWRS-00218-2010.
J. Ostrowski and M. F. Anjos are with the Department of Management Sci-
ences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada.
A. Vannelli is with the School of Engineering, University of Guelph, Guelph,
ON N1G 2W1, Canada.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPWRS.2011.2162008
Maximum ramp-down rate of generator
(MW/h).
Maximum ramp-up rate of generator
(MW/h).
Maximum shutdown rate of generator
(MW).
Maximum startup rate of generator (MW).
Set of time periods.
Nmber of hours generator is required to be
on at the start of the planning period (h).
Minimum number of time periods required
for generator to be on before it can be
turned off (h).
Variables
Startup cost of unit in period ($).
Power produced at time of generator
(MW).
Maximum available power at time from
generator (MW).
On/off status at time of generator .
Startup status at time of generator .
Shutdown status at time of generator .
I. INTRODUCTION
T
HE unit commitment (UC) problem is a very important
problem in the power industry. The UC problem mini-
mizes system-wide operational costs of power generators by
providing an optimal schedule of power production for each
generator so that the demand for electricity is met. Genera-
tors must operate within certain technical limits. Operational
constraints such as ramping constraints and minimum uptime/
downtime constraints, in addition to the scale of the problem,
make large UC problems challenging to solve.
The UC problem is generally modeled as a large-scale
non-convex problem. A popular method for solving UC prob-
lems in the past has been Lagrangian relaxation. However,
the availability of modern software has made mixed integer
linear programming (MILP) an attractive option. The rst
MILP UC formulation was described in [1] and has been
used extensively ever since. This formulation uses three sets
of binary variables to model the on/off status of generators.
As computational power increased so did the complexity of
0885-8950/$26.00 2011 IEEE
40 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2012
the MILP formulations, adding features such as ramping con-
straints and minimum up and downtimes. Some formulations
such as [2] and [3] kept the 3-binary variable format while
others sought more compact formulations [4] by reducing the
number of binary variables. Other efforts at improving the UC
formulation focus on specic aspects of the UC problem. In [5],
Frangioni et al. give an improved formulation for the quadratic
objective function, while [6] strengthens the UC formulation
by examining the minimum up and downtime polytope of the
3-binary variables model.
The UC formulation provides a rough approximation of the
costs to generate electricity. Ideally, one would like to more
accurately incorporate the physical constraints on the system.
Unfortunately, in the real world, the time required to solve the
UC models is a hard practical limitation, restricting the size and
scope of UCformulations. Strengthening the basic UC formula-
tion will have a positive effect in solving more advanced models.
Even though the UC model was developed in an era of mo-
nopolistic producers, it remains important today, even after the
deregulation of the power industry. The UC problem can easily
be extended to generate production schedules in a competitive
market environment [3], [7], [8]. Given sufcient time, MILP
methods are able to produce provably optimal solutions to UC.
From a fairness perspective, this is important in competitive
markets as two near-optimal solutions can produce considerably
different payments to generator owners [9].
An improved formulation for the UC problem is especially
valuable for advanced and computationally demanding prob-
lems such as stochastic formulations [10] or transmission
switching [11]. The valid inequalities discussed in this paper
may also be applied to MILP formulations of the self-sched-
uling problem. However, it should be noted that although a
pseudo-polynomial formulation of the whole convex hull of the
feasible points for the self-scheduling problem is known [12],
[13], it has not been found useful in the context of pure MILP
or mixed-integer quadratic programming approaches.
The basic UC formulation we consider is described in
Section II. In Section III, we provide computational results
that indicate that the 3-binary variable formulation based on
[3] is more computationally effective than [4], even though the
former has considerably more binary variables. In Section IV,
we present a class of inequalities that can be used to strengthen
the UC formulation. Computational results are given in
Section V. Conclusions will be given in Section VI. Problem
data used for computational test are given in Appendix A,
while Appendix B contains proofs showing the strength of the
proposed inequalities.
II. 3-BINARY VARIABLE FORMULATION
The unit commitment problem can be formulated as
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
where represents the set of feasible production quantities
for generator in time period . The function gives the
demand at time while gives the spinning reserve require-
ment. The function gives the cost of generator pro-
ducing units of electricity at time . It is generally assumed
to be a quadratic function. Typically, is modeled as a
piecewise linear function. Strong inequalities for the linear ap-
proximation, called perspective cuts, are given in [14] and [5].
In the case of uncertainty, the parameters can incorporate ex-
pected costs and risk aversion. The focus of this paper lies with
the set of constraints in (4).
The operational constraints dening are described as
follows.
Generation Limits: If a generator is turned on, the power
output from that generator must be within certain operational
limits:
(5)
Recall that is a binary variable that is equal to one if unit
is on during time period . If unit is off during time , constraint
(5) forces to be zero.
Ramping Constraints: The power output of a generator
cannot uctuate too rapidly. The variables are constrained
by ramp-up (ramp-down) rates as well as startup (shutdown)
rates [3]:
(6)
Constraint (6) limits the increase in power output allowed be-
tween time intervals. If the generator was on in the previous
time period , then the increase in power output
cannot be larger than the ramp-up rate. If the generator is turned
on in the current time period , then the generator can
produce at a maximum units of energy in time period . A
similar argument holds for ramp-down constraints:
(7)
Uptime and Downtime Constraints: The minimum uptime
constraints are commonly expressed by the set of linear equa-
tions [3]
(8)
(9)
(10)
OSTROWSKI et al.: TIGHT MIXED INTEGER LINEAR PROGRAMMING FORMULATIONS FOR THE UNIT COMMITMENT PROBLEM 41
(11)
(12)
(13)
where and . At the
start of the planning period, there may be some generators that
have recently been turned on or turned off. Equations (12) and
(13) force these generators to remain on for the appropriate
amount of time to satisfy the minimum up and downtime con-
straints. Note that these constraints only serve to x the ap-
propriate variables. Equations (8) and (10) enforce the min-
imumuptime constraint while (9) and (11) enforce the minimum
downtime constraints.
An alternative to the minimumup/downtime constraints men-
tioned above is based on a series of papers [15] and [6]. In [6],
Rajan and Takriti claim that the constraints (14) and (15), along
with the following logical constraints and variable-bound con-
straints, dene the convex hull of all feasible solutions in the
minimum up and downtime polytope:
(14)
and
(15)
While it is not the scope of this paper to verify this claim, com-
putational results in Section III indicate that adding the new set
of minimumup/downtime inequalities can have a signicant im-
pact on the computational time needed to solve UC problems.
Startup Costs: A startup cost is incurred when a generator is
put into operation. The cost is dependent on how long the unit
has been inactive. While the startup cost function is nonlinear,
it can be discretized into hourly periods, giving a stepwise func-
tion. The MILP formulation for the startup cost is [16]
(16)
and
(17)
Logical Constraints: In addition to the above constraints,
constraint (18) is needed to ensure that and take the
appropriate values when a generator is either turned on or off:
(18)
TABLE I
COMPUTATIONAL RESULTS
TABLE II
GENERATOR DATA
TABLE III
GENERATOR COST
III. CHOOSING THE FORMULATION
Note that if all the variables are known, then the and
variables are easily determined. Because of this, the formulation
can be rewritten to omit all and terms. This is the approach
taken by [4]. The advantage of this method is that the number
of binary variables needed in the formulation is reduced by a
factor of three. However, there are some drawbacks to this type
of formulation. Mainly, using binary variables to indicate start
up or shut down can make it easier to generate strong valid in-
equalities. Table I compares the formulations using data pro-
vided by [4] adapted to include ramping data. Tables II and
III give information regarding generator parameters and costs,
while the types of generators as well as demand can be found
in Appendix A. The results shown in Table I indicate that the
original formulation seems to be more effective. Problems are
solved to within 0.5% of optimality using a 2-h time limit. All
tests in this paper were carried out using CPLEX 12.1 on an
Intel Xeon 2.4 GHz ( 2) processor with 4 GB of memory.
The formulation proposed by [4], that requiring fewer binary
variables, is referred to as the efcient formulation. The original
formulation is the formulation outlined in Section II with min-
imum up/downtime constraints (8)(13), while Up/Downtime is
42 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2012
the original formulation with the minimum up/downtime con-
straints given in [6].
It may seem counterintuitive that larger formulations may be
easier to solve. The results begin to make sense when consid-
ering the high degree of correlation between the , , and
variables. While xing the variable to one, one also xes
to zero for all . Similarly, many vari-
ables can be xed to zero if were xed to zero. Indeed,
because the and variables are determined by the vari-
ables, we could relax the integrality constraints on both and .
That being said, we do not recommend relaxing the integrality
constraints for the following reasons. The assumed benet of
relaxing the integrality constraints is that fewer variables will
need to be branched on, leading to a smaller enumeration tree.
There is a cost, however, of relaxing these constraints. MILP
solvers contain tools that attempt to x integer variables during
the enumeration process. Also, cutting plane methods are able
to exploit the integrality of variables. By relaxing the integrality
constraint, the solver does not know that the variable must be
integral, and is not able to look for opportunities to exploit that
fact. A better way to avoid branching on or variables would
be to adjust their branching priority so that they are chosen only
after all variables have been xed (effectively prohibiting them
to be candidates for branching).
Furthermore, the underlying assumption that branching on
and variables is bad may not be true. There may be certain in-
stances for which branching on a variable may provide a better
branch than any of the variables. By allowing for branching
on all variables, the solver has more choices to pick the best
branching variable. In theory, if a solver is reasonably adept at
picking branching variables, a larger pool of branching candi-
dates should produce a better enumeration tree. That being said,
choosing the right branching disjunction is very difcult, and
even advanced solvers such as CPLEX cannot be expected to
consistently produce good branches without requiring a large
amount of time to do so. A possible topic for future research
would be to develop branching rules specically for the UC
problem.
Note that these results seem to contradict the results in [4].
One possible reason for the discrepancy is the difference in the
solvers used. The authors of [4] used CPLEX version 9.0 while
the results in this paper were obtained using CPLEX 12.1. A
major advancement in CPLEX between these versions has been
the implementation of the feasibility pump [17], a heuristic used
to nd feasible solutions.
Lastly, we investigate the impact of the minimum up/down
time constraints provided by [6]. The computational results
show that these inequalities are better than those used in [4].
IV. TIGHTER DESCRIPTIONS OF THE POWER
GENERATION POLYTOPE
The goal of this paper is to study the set of feasible pro-
duction schedules for individual power generators. The more
closely the feasible region of a problem instance resembles its
convex hull, the more easily the instance will likely be solved.
By studying the convex hull of power generation schedules, we
present groups of inequalities that signicantly strengthen the
linear programming (LP) relaxation of UC problem instances
as well as decreasing overall computation time. As only con-
straints dening the polytope of feasible schedules for a single
generator are considered, generator subscripts will be omitted
in this section.
Upper Bound Constraints:
(19)
where
. These constraints serve to make the upper
bound on power output a function of the and terms. If a given
generator is turned off at time , then the generator cannot
produce more than in time . Similarly, if the generator is
turned off at time , then it cannot produce more than
in time (because it needs to be able to ramp down to or
belowin time ). For large [when ],
knowing the generator will be turned off at time does not
affect the upper production limits at time because even if the
generator were producing at maximum capacity at time , there
will be sufcient time for the generator to ramp down to a level
that will allow it to shut off at time .
If the generator is not turned off in the interval ,
then the upper bound for is if the generator is on at time
and 0 if it is off. If the generator is on at and is not turned off
in the interval, then all variables on the right-hand side (RHS)
of (19) are zero except the term, making the RHS . If the
generator is off at time , then either all variables on the RHS of
(19) are zero, or one of the terms and the term are equal to
one. These terms cancel each other out, making the RHS 0.
The term is bounded above by the minimum up time to
ensure that only one term takes the value one in the interval
.
Ramp-Down Constraints: If and
(20)
is a valid inequality for . The generator must always obey
the ramping constraints at all time intervals the generator is on.
Under certain circumstances, however, the ramping constraints
can be strengthened. If a generator was turned on at time ,
the difference between the startup rate and the minimum
power limits may provide a tighter bound than the ramp-down
rate [because must be below and must be
greater than ]. In this case, both and equal 1,
making the RHS in (20) a tighter constraint than if the
actual ramping rate was used [if ]. The ramping
constraints are further strengthened by forcing
to be negative if the generator is turned on at time . In this case,
the constraint enforces that .
Compare for a moment the constraints in (20) with those in
(7). As a result of the assumption that , the
term will always
be negative. As a result, the set of constraints (20) will always be
OSTROWSKI et al.: TIGHT MIXED INTEGER LINEAR PROGRAMMING FORMULATIONS FOR THE UNIT COMMITMENT PROBLEM 43
stronger than constraints (7), i.e., any fractional solution in the
LP relaxation that satises the constraints in (20) will also sat-
isfy constraints (7). In this way, the set of constraints (20) can be
said to dominate ramp-down constraints (7). If constraints (20)
are included in the formulation, constraints (7) can be omitted
with no loss in performance.
If , , and
(21)
Constraints in (21) are similar to those in (20) except that they
take into account information from time .
The last strengthened ramping constraint comes when
bounding ramping over two time periods:
(22)
Ramp-Up Constraints: If and
(23)
Constraint (23) is similar to (20). If and the
generator will be turned off in time , then the upper bound
of provided by the is stronger than
the upper bound provided by the RU rate. Also, the addition of
the term forces the RHS to be negative if the generator is
turned off at time [implying that ]. Similar to
constraints (20), it can be shown that constraints (23) dominate
constraints (6).
Ramp-up constraints given in (24) are analogous to (22).
If , , and , then
(24)
are valid inequalities.
Under minimal assumptions, the Ramp-up and Ramp-down
inequalities described in (20)(24) are facets for certain projec-
tions of . Consider the inequality (20):
Inequality (20) is a facet for the subspace formed by projecting
onto the variables with time indices and . Similarly,
for the remaining constraints that include variables with time
indices , , and , the constraint is a facet for the pro-
jection of onto the set of all variables with time indices ,
, and . The proofs are given in Appendix B.
V. COMPUTATIONAL RESULTS
To test the impact of the tightened formulation on the UC, we
used a sample problem based on [4]. The test problems in [4]
include ten generators (three of which with similar characteris-
tics). The eight unique generators are described in Tables II and
III. The quadratic cost functions were approximated by a piece-
wise linear function. The marginal cost of power produced in the
bottom half of the possible production quantities is ,
while the marginal cost of producing power above the midpoint
is (given in Table III). Also, we assume that the
cost of starting up a generator within hours of its previous
shutdown is done with a cost of . For any generator that has
been off longer than hours, the startup cost is . Spin-
ning reserves were set to be 3%of demand. To generate problem
instances, we used replicated data from [4] to create larger in-
stances. By replicating generators and scaling the hourly de-
mand appropriately, we generated instances of varying sizes,
each primarily containing generators of type one and two. Cre-
ating test instances by replicating generators introduces sym-
metry that can result in signicantly harder than usual problems.
We solve the smaller problems to 0.5%optimality and the larger
problems to 1.0% optimality. The small problems are identical
to those solved in Section III.
Obviously the time required to solve a problem is the most
important measure of the quality of the formulation. Unfortu-
nately, however, looking only at time required to solve problems
does not provide an indication of why one formulation is better
than another. In addition to time, we also use the integrality gap
to measure the strength of a formulation.
The integrality gap is dened to be ,
where is the optimal value of the LP relaxation and
the optimal value of the MILP. As the LP relaxation provides a
lower bound on the cost, better formulations will provide better
(larger) lower bounds. The integrality gap is a major factor in the
time expected to solve the MILP. A node in an enumeration tree
can only be pruned when there is a guarantee that the node does
not contain an optimal solution. This is done when the LP re-
laxation at the node, i.e., the lower bound on the objective value
of the node, is larger than the best known solution. Tighter for-
mulations for the MILPs produce better (larger) lower bounds,
making it more likely that the LP solution at a node is worse
than the best known integer solution.
The UC formulation described in [6] was compared with and
without the additional valid inequalities described in Section IV.
Columns 3 and 4 of Table IVshowthe integrality gaps at the root
node for both the formulations exactly as in [6], referred to as
UD, and that based on Section IV, referred to as Tight. The
integrality gaps are labeled Gap UD and Gap Tight, respec-
tively. Column 5 of Table IV indicates the percent improvement
in the gap at the root node fromincluding the additional inequal-
ities. The last four columns of Table IV indicate solution times
and number of nodes in the branch-and-bound tree for solving
the problems to the pre-specied optimality gap using each of
the formulations.
The results in Table IV indicate that the strengthened formu-
lation can considerably improve the solution time for the UC
problem. The LP bound is much better with the additional con-
straints, allowing for nodes to be pruned earlier in the tree. For
most of the larger instances, CPLEX is able to exceed the 1.0%
optimality tolerance without needing to branch.
44 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2012
TABLE IV
COMPUTATIONAL RESULTS
One note of caution regarding these inequalities is that the
addition of all constraints may make the LP relaxation
harder to solve. It is possible that, while the corresponding enu-
meration tree may be smaller using the inequalities, the addi-
tional time solving the LPs may outweigh the benets. For-
tunately, it is not necessary to include all the inequalities to
the problem formulation. For instance, the ramp-up constraints
need not be included for time periods where overall demand
is decreasing. Also, some generators may be so cheap (expen-
sive) that it is clear that they will (not) be in operation. Rather
than explicitly adding all the constraints to the problem formu-
lation, the computational tests were done by declaring them as
user cuts. This designation tells CPLEXthat the inequalities are
not necessary to ensure that the resulting solution is feasible,
but that they only exist to potentially strengthen the formula-
tion. CPLEX then examines the set of inequalities and adds the
inequalities it thinks will be benecial, so, while it can poten-
tially add all , it will likely add just a small fraction of
the inequalities. Searching through these constraints does come
with a computational cost. However, given the nature of the UC
problem, most of this cost can in principle be avoided. The UC
problem is solved on a daily basis, and changes to the gener-
ators are rare. It is reasonable to assume that the collection of
cuts that improve the solving of todays UC problem will also
be effective at solving tomorrows problem.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we presented an improved formulation for the
operating region of an electric generator. The additional con-
straints are easily generated and can have a signicant effect on
the quality of the UC formulation and the computational time
required to solve it. While we study these formulations only in
the context of the UC problem, it is straightforward to apply
them to other scheduling problems.
TABLE V
NUMBER OF GENERATORS
TABLE VI
DEMAND (% OF TOTAL CAPACITY)
TABLE VII
AFFINELY INDEPENDENT SOLUTIONS TO CONSTRAINT (20)
APPENDIX A
PROBLEM DATA
Problems used for computational testing were generated ran-
domly by choosing how many of each generator were in the
problem. The breakdown of generators in each problem is given
in Table V. Hourly demand was determined using Table VI.
APPENDIX B
PROOF OF THE FACETS
We assume that for every generator , the UC problem re-
mains feasible if generator is turned off throughout the entire
time horizon. Note that if this is not the case, then there is at
least one time period, , where generator must be turned on in
order to satisfy the demand. In this case, the variable can
be xed to one.
Recall that is the polytope describing feasible production
schedules for generator . Let be any set of variables de-
OSTROWSKI et al.: TIGHT MIXED INTEGER LINEAR PROGRAMMING FORMULATIONS FOR THE UNIT COMMITMENT PROBLEM 45
TABLE VIII
AFFINELY INDEPENDENT SOLUTIONS TO CONSTRAINT (21)
TABLE IX
AFFINELY INDEPENDENT SOLUTIONS TO CONSTRAINT (22)
TABLE X
AFFINELY INDEPENDENT SOLUTIONS TO CONSTRAINT (23)
TABLE XI
AFFINELY INDEPENDENT SOLUTIONS TO CONSTRAINT (24)
scribing generator . The projection of onto the set
, is the subspace of dened only by the variables in . For
any solution in the projection, there is at least one solution
in that is consistent with on variables .
A valid inequality is a facet for a polyhedron with dimen-
sion if and only if there are afnely independent solutions in
that satisfy the inequality with equality [18]. We use this prop-
erty to showthat the ramping constraints presented in Section IV
are facets for some projections of .
Consider a constraint of type (20). Let
. The di-
mension of onto is 7 [there are 8 variables and one
equality constraint from (18)]. Table VII shows 7 afnely inde-
pendent solutions that satisfy (20) with equality.
46 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 27, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2012
Similarly, constraints of type (21) are facets of the projec-
tion of onto
. Note that the dimension of is 10
[12 variables and two equality constraints of type (18)]. Ten
afnely independent solutions are given in Table VIII. The ap-
propriate number of afnely independent solutions to prove that
(22) is a facet on the projection of onto is given
in Table IX, and the afnely independent solutions proving that
(23) and (24) are facets on the projection of onto
are given in Tables X and XI, respectively.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank D. Fuller for his helpful
feedback and contributions to the presentation. The authors also
would like to thank the referees for their invaluable comments.
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[18] G. Nemhauser and L. Wolsey, Integer and Combinatorial Optimiza-
tion. New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1999.
James Ostrowski (M10) received the Ph.D. degree in the Industrial and Sys-
tems Engineering Department at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA.
While at Lehigh, he was awarded second place in the George Nicholson Stu-
dent Paper competition for his work dealing with symmetry in integer program-
ming. Since Lehigh, he has been working as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the De-
partment of Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON,
Canada, under the supervision of M. F. Anjos and A. Vannelli. His research in-
terests include integer and stochastic programming.
Miguel F. Anjos (M06) received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Wa-
terloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 2001.
He has been with the Department of Management Sciences at the Univer-
sity of Waterloo since 2004, became an Associate Professor in 2007, and was
Associate Chair for Graduate Studies & Research from 2007 to 2009. He is
cross-appointed since 2004 to the Department of Electrical and Computer En-
gineering. His research interests are in optimization, and he is particularly in-
terested in its application to engineering problems. He has worked on indus-
trial research projects in revenue management (sponsored by British Midland
Airways), network planning (sponsored by Bell Canada), and ambulance de-
ployment (sponsored by the Region of Waterloo Emergency Medical Services).
He has been awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Re-
searchers for 20092010.
Dr. Anjos is an Associate Editor of Discrete Applied Mathematics and a
member of the editorial board of Optimization and Engineering. He is also a
member of the Research Review Committee of MITACS.
Anthony Vannelli (M06) received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 1983.
From 1983 to 1984, he was a Research Fellow with the Mathematical Sci-
ences Department, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY,
where he worked on circuit layout problems in a group led by R. Brayton. He
was the recipient of a University Research Fellowship from the Natural Sci-
ences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, which he held
from 1984 to 1993. He joined the Department of Industrial Engineering, Uni-
versity of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 1984 and returned to the Depart-
ment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, in 1987.
In 19931994, he was a Visiting Research Scientist with Shell Research, Am-
sterdam, The Netherlands. He was the Chair of Electrical and Computer Engi-
neering at the University of Waterloo from 1998 to 2004 and Associate Dean
for the Faculty of Engineering, University of Waterloo, from 20042006. Since
January 2007, he has been the Dean of the College of Physical and Engineering
Science at the University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada. His main research
focuses on the development of efcient linear, nonlinear, and discrete optimiza-
tion techniques to solve large-scale circuit layout, power, and design problems.