Edward P. Hamilton Distinguished Professor; Professor of Mathematical Sciences; Professor of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems
Ph.D., University of Michigan
Phi Beta Kappa, 1964
Nato Postdoctoral Fellowship in Science, 1975-76
Fulbright-Hayes Research Award, 1975-76
Rensselaer Trustees Outstanding Teacher Award, 1994
Boeing Outstanding Educator Award, 1995
Ecker’s research interests are in several areas of optimization including geometric programming, multiple objective linear programming, algorithm development and evaluation in nonlinear programming, and applications of mathematical programming. Mathematical programming deals with the problem of optimizing a function of several variables subject to inequality and equality constraints on other functions of several variables. Recent areas of application include the development of an optimization model of locating protein binding sites on DNA strands and the development of a linear programming model for managing consumer credit delinquency.
He is also very interested in developing studio courses in which students are actively engaged in the learning process. Much of his current efforts have focused on developing materials for the Studio Calculus course at Rensselaer.
In addition, Ecker has focused on optimization problems involving several objective functions that are to be optimized. These multiple objective problems have important applications in management science decision making contexts.
Studio Calculus, Harper Collins College Publishers, New York, NY, 1996.
“Optimizing a linear function over an efficient set”, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications Vol. 83, No. 4, 1994 (with J.H. Song).
“Robot Trajectory Planning by Nonlinear Programming”, SIAM Journal on Scientific and Statistical Computing, Vol. 15, No. 6, pp 1401-1412 (with M. Kupferschmid and S.P. Marin), 1994.