How We Got Started
The Optimization Firm was launched in 2001 to commercialize optimization software developed by Professor Nick Sahinidis during his tenure at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, while managing the Sahinidis lab. The company's flagship commercial product, BARON 5, made its first appearance in 2001 when it was released under GAMS. Today, BARON is being used in academic research projects, private companies, and even large-scale industrial applications in energy, manufacturing, and healthcare. Read our Company Brochure to learn more.
BARON
BARON is an optimization software tool that uses a branch-and-reduce algorithm to solve various mathematical optimization problems, including LP, NLP, MIP, and MINLP problems. BARON is widely recognized as the world’s best complete solver for global optimization and has been used by over 800 institutions in more than 60 countries worldwide.
ALAMO
ALAMO is a modeling software tool that uses innovative optimization and sampling technology to build interpretable machine learning models from data. Developed by top experts in machine learning and optimization, ALAMO is widely used by engineers, managers, and data scientists worldwide.
Who Are Our Developers?
BARON was developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1991-2007) and Carnegie Mellon University (2007-2020) before moving to Atlanta, GA, where Professor Nick Sahinidis serves on the faculty of Georgia Tech. While Professor Sahinidis has led the BARON project, many other optimization experts have contributed to the theory and development of the software, including Hong Ryoo, Joseph Shectman, Vinay Ghildyal, Mohit Tawarmalani, Xiaowei Bao, Aida Khajavirad, Keith Zorn, Yash Puranik, Mustafa Kılınç, and Carlos Nohra.
The BARON Publications page lists publications describing BARON, its methodology, and various applications. The BARON Notices page provides BARON-related copyright notices.
Where Are We Now?
The Optimization Firm is currently based in Atlanta, GA, and remains affiliated with Professor Sahinidis, who is currently at Georgia Tech.