Algorithms, Optimization

Office: 233 Rhodes

Phone: 607.255.9144

Website: click here

Fax: 607.255.9129

Robert Bland received his B.S. and M.S. from Cornell University in 1969 and 1972 respectively. He also earned his doctorate from Cornell in 1974. He has been a professor in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering since 1978. Professor Bland was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation fellow from 1978-80.

Robert Bland works on algorithms for linear programming and discrete optimization problems with applications in scheduling and routing. He is also interested in combinatorial and discrete optimization. He laid foundations in the study of oriented matroids, and has made key contributions to linear programming. Bland also studies apportionment, where he focuses on equitable allocation of indivisible goods among competing claimants. He is especially interested in problems of legislative apportionment, in the connections between apportionment methods and issues in local/global optimization, and in axiomatic approaches and related impossibility theorems.

Select Publications

“A combinatorial abstraction of linear programming”. Journal of Combinatorial Theory B 23:33-57 (1977).

“An empirical study of network flow algorithms”. Network Flows and Matching: First Dimacs Implementation Challenge, eds: D.S. Johnson and C.C. McGeogh, American Math Society, 119 -156 (1993). (With J. Cheriyan, D. Jensen, L. Ladanyi)

“New finite rules for the simplex method”. Mathematics of Operations Research 2:103 - 07 (1977).

“Orientability of matroids”. Journal of Combinatorial Theory B 24:94 -123. (1978).

 “The allocation of resources by linear programming”. Scientific American 244: 126 - 44

“The ellipsoid method: A survey. Operations Research 29: 1039 - 91 (1981). (With D. Golfarb and M.J. Todd)

“An abstract duality”. Discrete Mathematics 70: 203 - 08 (1988). (With B.L. Dietrich)

“Large traveling salesman problems arising from experiment sin in x-ray crystallography”, Operations Research Letters 8:125 - 28 (1989) (With D. F. Shallcross)

Professional Activities

Operations Research Society of America

Mathematical Programming

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics