Mr. Al-Baali obtained his PhD in 1984 on nonlinear least squares under the supervision of Roger Fletcher, MSc and Diploma from Dundee University (Scotland) and received his BSc from Damascus University (Syria).

Mehiddin Al-Baali is currently Professor at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), Oman, Research Fellow at Calabria University, Italy, and supervising two PhDs and one MSc Students. He Chaired the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, UAE University, and worked at Ajman University (UAE), and Damascus University, Syria. He was awarded Abdus Salam Prize for Mathematics Advancement in Syria, Distinguished Researcher in SQU, Best Paper of SQU Journal for Science, and 20 research grants.

His research interest lies in the area of numerical optimization with software algorithms for small and large-scale problems. In addition to his “first practical convergence result” for the Fletcher- Reeves conjugate gradient method, he published 40 papers (19 single author), edited 9 books (2 in progress), wrote 35 technical reports, delivered more than 100 talks at high level conferences and well-known institutes, hosted more than 20 well-known researchers. He was member of the organizing committee for 20 conferences/workshop and chairman of the conference, of the organizing committee and of the scientific program committee for 8 of them. Also he became Associate Editor for some international journals as Computational Optimization and Applications (COAP) and Optimization Methods and Software (OMS), and Reviewer for Mathematical Reviews, etc.

Concerning teaching experience, Al-Baali published 3 textbooks (in Arabic), wrote 5 lecture notes, proposed 5 courses in the MSc and PhD programs in SQU, established the Computer Science Division in Damascus University and was awarded Best Teacher in Department of Mathematics and Statistics (SQU). He gave invited short courses on numerical analysis and optimization at several universities (particularly, Calabria University, Italy).

Associate member of GERAD since December 2017