Defeng Sun

Defeng Sun (Chinese name: 孙德锋) is a Chinese applied mathematician and operations researcher. He holds the position of Chair Professor of Applied Optimization and Operations Research, and has been serving as the Head of Department of Applied Mathematics in The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) since 2019. Sun had been the President of The Hong Kong Mathematical Society in 2020-2024.

Education Sun received his Ph.D. degree in 1995 from Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, after obtaining his bachelor's and Master’s degree from Nanjing University in 1989 and 1992, respectively.

Research Sun's research interests lie in the broad areas of non-convex continuous optimization and machine learning including mathematical theory, algorithmic developments and real-world applications.

In 2006, he solved the long-standing open question of characterizing the strong regularity of nonlinear semidefinite programming (SDP) problems.

Sun was awarded the triennial 2018 Beale-Orchard-Hays Prize for Excellence in Computational Mathematical Programming by Mathematical Optimization Society

Awards

He was named a SIAM Fellow in 2020, for "contributions to algorithms and software for conic optimization, particularly matrix optimization",