William W. Hager is a Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at the University of Florida and co-director of the Center for Applied Optimization. He is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and members of both the Mathematical Optimization Society and the American Geophysical Union. His research has focused on convergence analysis for algorithms in optimal control, the development of algorithms for solving large, sparse optimization problems including his dual active set algorithm, and related update/downdate techniques for sparse Cholesky factorizations that arise in active set methods.