Peter Richtarik is a tenured Assistant Professor of Optimization at the School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh. He obtained his PhD in Operations Research from Cornell University in 2007 and prior to his current appointment has held a postdoctoral fellowship position (2007-2009) at the Centre for Operations Research and Econometrics, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.

Dr. Richtarik's research interests lie in the area of big data optimization, parallel algorithms, gradient methods and machine learning. In a series of recent papers he has developed a general complexity theory of serial and parallel coordinate descent methods. These highly efficient codes are publicly available in the package ACDC. Dr. Richtarik's research is supported by several grants, most notably a $1.1 million grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for studying optimization algorithms for analyzing big digital resources.