Dr. Mark A. Abramson

In the summer of 2008 I retired from the US Air Force, left my faculty position at the Air Force Institute of Technology, and accepted a position as a senior mathematician with Boeing Research and Technology in Bellevue WA. Since Boeing only allows me a private (internal) web site, I am indebted to my colleague and friend, Professor Charles Audet, who has been kind enough to both host the NOMADm mixed variable optimization software that I have authored and maintained for several years and to lend me a little space to post some personal information and items of interest.

If you need to contact me by e-mail, you can construct my address by taking the parts of my name given at the top of this page and inserting them into the expression, [FirstName].[MiddleInitial].[LastName]@boeing.com.

I am primarily interested in direct search optimization algorithms and their application to engineering problems. Some of my recent work includes the NOMADm software, optimal sensor placement problems in tsunami warning and structural health monitoring, quantitative object reconstruction in x-ray tomography, simulation optimization problems with CPU time correlation, and second-order convergence properties of direct search algorithms.

My Professional Page
NOMADm Software Page


Personal

Hometown: Alexandria, Virginia
Family: Married, 7 children (BGBGBGG, ages 6-21)
Hobbies: Songwriting, singing, genealogy
Political Philosophy: Conservative Independent
Religion: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints


My Job Search

In case it can help anyone who is searching for a math job in academia, industry, or government, I decided to post statistics I kept on my job search, which began in the 2006-2007 cycle, and much more earnestly during 2007-2008.

Academic Total
Applications: 104 135
Conference Interviews: 13 15
Telephone Interviews: 8 21
On-Site Interviews: 4 11
Rejection Letters: 65 87
Failed to Respond: 35 37
Withdrawals: 3 7
Informal Job Offers: 2 2
Formal Job Offers: 0 2


Last modified May 22, 2009.