Laurent El Ghaoui

UC Berkeley EECS Professor & Chief Scientist SumUp Analytics

Laurent El Ghaoui is the Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of SumUp Analytics, which specializes in text analytics for investment professionals, and Kayrros, a Fintech specializing in Energy markets. He joined the Berkeley faculty in April 1999 as an Acting Associate Professor, and went on leave from UC since July 2003 until September 2006 to work for SAC Capital Management, a hedge fund based in New York and Connecticut. Since then Laurent has been back full time at UC Berkeley in the EECS department. He teaches optimization in that department (EE 127 / EE 227AT and EE 227BT), and a class on Optimization Models within the Masters of Financial Engineering at the Haas School of Business.

Laurent is the recipient of a Bronze Medal for Engineering Sciences, from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France), a CAREER award, an Okawa research grant, and a Google research grant.

He holds a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics, obtained from Stanford University.