Professor Michael Ferris Retires After 38 Years at UW–Madison

June 19, 2026

After nearly four decades of untangling some of the most complex mathematical puzzles in optimization, Professor Michael Ferris is stepping back — or at least stepping sideways. The John P. Morgridge Chair and Jacques-Louis Lions Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison will officially retire on June 30, closing a chapter that began when a young Cambridge mathematician arrived in Madison for what was supposed to be just one year. “Puzzles and problems are what have driven my career,” Ferris said at a recent awards ceremony. “From those problems, you generate algorithms and methods using the tools you’ve learned to solve them.”

A detour that became a destination

Ferris came to UW–Madison in the late 1980s on a Chancellor’s scholarship to work with Professor Olvi Mangasarian, completing his Cambridge PhD while serving as a research assistant in his adopted department. When it came time to hire, the university’s preference for outside candidates worked in his favor — his degrees were from Cambridge, not Wisconsin — and so he stayed. What followed was a 38-year tenure that would see him earn some of the field’s highest honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, and the Beale-Orchard-Hays Prize from the Mathematical Programming Society. He is both a Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Fellow and an Information for Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) Fellow. His research — centered on algorithms, theory, and applications of mathematical optimization — has ranged far beyond pure mathematics. Cancer treatment planning, energy modeling, economic policy, traffic engineering, and environmental systems have all been shaped by tools developed in his group, including the widely used PATH Solver, a computational tool Ferris helped develop that became a standard tool for finding equilibrium solutions in complex systems. The PATH Solver essentially determines the point at which competing forces, prices, or flows balance out, which has become a standard resource for economists, engineers, and policy analysts worldwide. His work has crossed disciplines in ways that mirror the interdisciplinary ideals now driving the university’s newest academic ventures.

Cancer treatment planning, energy modeling, economic policy, traffic engineering, and environmental systems have all been shaped by tools developed in his group.

Ferris’s colleague, Computer Sciences professor Stephen Wright, describes Ferris as “one of the leading researchers in the world in connecting optimization to real-world problems in an enormous variety of areas.” He continues, “His ability to work with domain scientists and engineers to leverage the power of optimization in their own research areas is unparalleled.”

Research and teaching

Ferris traces his research philosophy directly to Mangasarian, his early mentor, who was legendarily prolific with ideas — not all of them workable. “Amongst the 10 or 15 ideas he’d come up with, there would be two or three gems,” Ferris recalled with a laugh. The lesson he drew was practical: ask the right questions early, before you’ve committed to a bad path. “It was a skill I learned out of necessity — ways of actually trying to get to the heart of the problem.” That discipline of focused inquiry, he noted, has only grown more relevant in an age of AI. That same philosophy shaped his teaching. He developed an introductory optimization course at UW–Madison that he taught for decades, right up to his final semester. The course was designed not just to convey technical content, but to teach students how to problem-solve by discovering the range of feasible solutions rather than following a procedure step by step. “It’s a different way of thinking,” he said. “You’re not going from A to B to D. You’re thinking about the overall picture of the problem.” That care extended well beyond the classroom. Cheng-Wei Lu, one of Ferris’s graduate students, was sidelined by an injury and struggling. Lu recalls Ferris pulling him aside after a meeting. “I don’t know if you would like an old guy’s advice,” Ferris said to him, “but you have my number, and you can always call me when you need someone to talk to.” For many who passed through his program, Ferris was both a mentor and a friend. Wright echoes this: ” Along with all his research accomplishments, he has been a terrific department citizen and leader and a person whose advice I value very highly. He leaves very big shoes to fill!”

When theory met crisis

Perhaps the most vivid illustration of Ferris’s approach came during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was called upon to help Wisconsin optimize its vaccine distribution. The challenge was equal parts logistical and human: allocating doses fairly across the state, accounting for shifting supply, varying demand, and — most unpredictably — human behavior. “Each week, the problem would change,” he said. “A new vaccine would come along, they would change the size of the boxes, the allocation would be different, or somebody would start endgaming the policies.” His team worked with the National Guard and the Department of Homeland Security to build models that were principled, fair, and adaptable. It wasn’t without friction — Dane County residents were sometimes frustrated to see vaccines shipped elsewhere in the name of statewide equity — but Ferris stands by the approach. “What I learned is that human behavior is very hard to model.” For a researcher who had spent years teaching the power of optimization in theory, seeing it applied under pressure, with real consequences, was something different. “You actually made a difference by using optimization and all the techniques you had taught for many years,” he said. “You were able to put it into practice in a pressure situation.”

Home for 38 years

When Ferris spoke at a recent departmental ceremony, he organized his remarks around the acronym PATH – not just the Solver, but an acronym that captures everything he values: Problems, Algorithms, Transformations, and Home. The last letter, he said, carries the most weight. “My wife and family have always been very important to me. They nourish me and create an environment where I can be who I am.” He spoke with equal warmth about the Computer Sciences department, which he described as a place that gave faculty latitude to pursue unconventional work, so long as the work was excellent. “They were willing to give you free rein while making it a home and a nurturing environment.”

“Make sure you enjoy what you’re doing, and do a great job at that.”

That home in Madison is where Ferris plans to remain, at least part of the time. After a required 75-day separation from the university, he hopes to return in a part-time research capacity — continuing to work on the problems that excite him without the responsibilities of administration and committee meetings. He also has a 17-month-old granddaughter nearby, a coastal footpath in Britain calling him, and a half-formed plan to learn the piano. “I’ve always wanted to play,” he said, “but I’m not sure I can. Maybe that’s the challenge.” His advice to the students he’s leaving behind is simple, borrowed from Mangasarian: “Make sure you enjoy what you’re doing, and do a great job at that. If you’re enjoying it, you’ll do better. Work on problems that inspire you — and if you do good work, everything else will take care of itself.”