Carl Laird
Professor and Interim Department Head, Chemical Engineering
Carl D. Laird is a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Laird received his B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Alberta in 2000 and his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006. He completed his postdoctoral studies in the Epidemiology Department at the University of Pittsburgh. Before joining CMU, Laird held faculty positions at Texas A&M and Purdue and served as a principal member of technical staff in the Discrete Mathematics and Optimization, Center for Computing Research at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Laird leads an internationally recognized research program in the field of process systems engineering most known for contributions in high-performance computing techniques for large-scale nonlinear optimization and parallel scientific computing, open-source software development, and successful solution of problems in non-traditional, high-impact research areas, including public health, homeland security, and critical infrastructure and energy systems. He is the recipient of several research and teaching awards, including INFORMS Computing Society Prize, CAST Division Outstanding Young Researcher Award, National Science Foundation Faculty Early Development (CAREER) Award, and the Montague Center for Teaching Excellence Award. He is also a recipient of the prestigious Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software for his work on IPOPT, a software library for solving nonlinear, nonconvex, large-scale continuous optimization problems.
Education
2006 Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
2000 B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Alberta
Affiliations
Media mentions
Chemical Engineering
A family approach to transforming the chemical process industry
Inspired by a product development approach used in the automotive industry, researchers propose an optimization-based approach to transform the chemical process industry and meet climate change goals.
Chemical Engineering
Waveform design improves catalyst performance
With a faster, reliable, and open-source mathematical framework for simulating and optimizing dynamic catalysis, researchers design the ideal waves for high catalyst activity.
Faculty award winners announced
Congratulations to the 2024 faculty award winners who represent six departments across the College of Engineering. The recipients were recognized for their achievements as researchers and educators.
PASA 2023
Chemical Engineering faculty featured at PASI 2023
ChemE’s Larry Biegler, Ignacio Grossmann, Carl Laird, and Ana Torres served as instructors and speakers during a four-day intensive course hosted by the Pan-American Advanced Studies Institute on Optimization and Data Science for Net-Zero Carbon and Sustainability (PASI) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Laird wins Best Oral presentation award at the ESCAPE 33 meeting in Athens
ChemE’s Carl Laird was awarded Best Oral presentation at the 33rd European Symposium on Computer-Aided Process Engineering (ESCAPE 33) in Athens, Greece.
Imperial College
Collaboration leads to new open-source Python package
ChemE’s Carl Laird teamed up with researchers from Imperial College and Sandia National Labs to develop the new open-source Python package, OMLT, which provides various optimization formulations for machine learning models.