Interview with Jerry Yurchisin, Senior Data Science Strategist, on Gurobi - The Mathematical Optimization Solver Company Discussed
Gurobi, a leading provider of mathematical optimization solutions, is helping businesses and organizations make better decisions by finding optimal solutions to complex problems. With the Gurobi Optimizer, a powerful solver, users can take a mathematical model of a problem and find the optimal solution within given constraints.
The Gurobi Optimizer is renowned as the world's fastest mathematical optimization solver, making optimization as easy and accessible as possible across diverse compute environments. This includes the Gurobi Instant Cloud, which allows users to run the Optimizer on their choice of Azure or AWS cloud environments at scale.
One of the key figures behind Gurobi's success is Jerry Yurchisin, a Senior Data Science Strategist at the company. Yurchisin's role involves reaching out to the data science and artificial intelligence communities to demonstrate the benefits of mathematical optimization. He has created lessons for Gurobi's Optimization for Data Scientists training series, which are tailored towards data scientists interested in applying mathematical optimization to their data-centric work.
Yurchisin's interest in mathematical optimization and linear programming was sparked during his graduate studies. His background in Integrated Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, and Statistics has equipped him with the necessary skills to excel in his role at Gurobi.
Gurobi's impact extends beyond the business world. The National Football League (NFL) uses Gurobi's mathematical optimization to generate and analyze over 50,000 schedules in the time it used to take them to generate only five options. This has simplified the scheduling process while providing more accessible scheduling options than ever before.
Notable customer success stories of Gurobi using mathematical optimization in real-world applications include USA Cycling. The organization developed optimization models that significantly transformed cycling race strategies and athlete training. Their Best Bike Split tool uses physics-based optimization for race tactics; the RunWithHal app delivers personalized adaptive training plans at scale by leveraging operations research. Most notably, Project 4:05 employed mixed-integer programming to optimize the U.S. Women’s Team Pursuit strategy, contributing to their gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics. This project earned USA Cycling the prestigious 2025 Franz Edelman Award, highlighting the impact of mathematical optimization in elite sports performance.
Beyond these specific examples, other companies use mathematical optimization for marketing spend, strategic supply chain decisions, and balancing cost and carbon emission goals, among other applications.
When using the Gurobi Optimizer, users represent their decisions, constraints, and objectives mathematically, then use their favorite programming language to code the problem and call the solver. The Gurobi Optimizer allows modeling of problems in various complexities, from simple linear expressions to complex nonlinear relationships. The Gurobi Compute Server offloads intense computations needed for optimization problems onto dedicated and clustered servers.
Gurobi's commitment to education is evident in Yurchisin's work. He finds it rewarding to be a part of Gurobi's efforts to educate data scientists on mathematical optimization. The company also offers support from a team of PhD-level experts for comprehensive guidance and technical assistance.
In conclusion, Gurobi's mathematical optimization solutions are revolutionizing decision-making processes for businesses and elite athletes alike. With its powerful solver, the Gurobi Optimizer, and a dedicated team of experts, Gurobi is making optimization as accessible as possible, driving better decisions, and ultimately, success.
The Gurobi Optimizer, a renowned technology in data-and-cloud-computing, enables optimization across diverse compute environments, including cloud services like Azure and AWS. Jerry Yurchisin, a Senior Data Science Strategist at Gurobi, leverages technology to demonstrate the benefits of mathematical optimization to the data science and artificial intelligence communities.
