- 2 Opening Ph.D. positions in my research team.
- A new result with my student Edward Lester: Stochastic Gradient Calibration of Neural Network–Driven Interacting Particle Systems
- Two new papers:
- (with T. Cao, D. Nguyen, T. Nguyen and N. Theiu), Optimal control of nonconvex sweeping processes with variable time via finite-difference approximations, submitted (2025); arXiv:2503.00667
- (with D. Nguyen, T. Nguyen, N. Ortiz-Robinsion and V. Rios), Well-posedness and stability of discrete approximations for controlled
sweeping processes with time delay, to appear in J. Optim. Theory Appl.; DOI: 10.1007/s10957-025-02746-w (2025), https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.20404
- I have received the Assigned Time for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activities (AY 25-26) award for the project: “Optimization Research, Data Science Curriculum Development, and External Grant Applications for Student Support.”
- New: Machine Learning Note By Dao Nguyen: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v30P3BRW5Yj-2MMbKKRHyd8VYjJDTN27/view?usp=sharing
- Finished 3 papers recently:
- [1] Discrete approximations and optimality conditions for controlled free-time sweeping processes (2024)
- [2] Optimal control of sweeping processes in unmanned surface vehicles and nanoparticle modeling, to appear in Optimization (2024)
- [3] Optimal control of perturbed sweeping process with applications to general robotic models (2024)
- Invited Talk at the University of California San Diego, Optimization and Data Science Seminar (in person), Oct 11, 2023.
- Invited Talk at the Computational Science Research Center, San Diego State University, Sep 15, 2023.
- New Trends in Optimization, Control, and Their Applications: https://www.springer.com/journal/10957/updates/24649414
- NSF conference grant $25,000: https://emunix.emich.edu/~bwang/MOM2023/index.html. We are sincerely grateful to the NSF for their support and trust in our project. Thanks to Professor Boris Mordukhovich and Ebrahim Sarabi for the collaboration in this proposal.
- Editor of the special issue for JOTA (Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications – Springer), Title: New Trend in Optimization, Control, and Their Applications, Special Issue Dedicated to Boris Sh. Mordukhovich.
- Our new results:
- Model Predictive Control using Neural Network, Dao Nguyen, submitted, 2023.
- Spot drilling time optimization for a cyclotron-based proton therapy system ( with Lewei Zhao, Sophie Wuyckens, Juntao You, Gang Liu, Xiliang Lu, Boris Mordukhovich, Xuanfeng Ding), submitted, 2023.
- Stability of the Solution Set of Quasi-variational Inequalities and Optimal Control (with Harbir Antil, Rafael Arndt, Boris Mordukhovich and Carlos N. Rautenberg), submitted, 2022, https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.00075.
- My students presented a poster presentation on “Model Predictive Control using Neural Network and ILQR” on Dec 6th at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
- I am organizing the conference “New trends in applied optimization control with applications & Midwest Optimization Meeting” at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, October 13-14, 2023
- I am organizing a mini-symposium at the 10th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, August 20-25, 2023.
- I am organizing a mini-symposium at the SIAM Conference on Control and Its Applications (CT23), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S, July 24 – 26, 2023.
- We already resume the Variational Analysis and Optimization Seminar Fall 2022 Winter 22, Thursdays 9 AM-10 AM (Virtual and Room # EH 2238). More information about our previous seminar: Variational Analysis and Optimization Seminar, Fridays 9 AM-10 AM (Virtual and Room # EH 2238), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
- I am going to run the Log(M) in the Winter 2023 and NSF REU in the summer 2023 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Results from our previous work with my students in Fall 2022 and Summer 2022.
What’s new:
Invited Talk at University of California – San Diego, January 14, 2026.
I would like to sincerely thank the journalists and editors from VnExpress, Thanh Niên, Giáo dục Việt Nam, and Tri Thức Magazine for taking the time to interview me and share my story. In the coming period, with the support of my colleagues in the VietGrowth team, I will continue to devote my efforts to sharing the experience and knowledge I have accumulated with younger generations of students. I hope to make a small but meaningful contribution to the academic community, as well as to the global research community. Students interested in optimization, data science, optimal control, and applications in engineering, medicine, economics, biology, and related fields are welcome to schedule a Zoom meeting with me via the following link:
👉 https://calendly.com/dnguyen28-sdsu/new-meeting
References:
[1] https://thanhnien.vn/giao-su-32-tuoi-giup-nhieu-sinh-vien-duoc-du-hoc-o-my-anh-phap…
[2] https://vnexpress.net/tu-hoc-tro-truong-huyen-den-giao-su…
[3] https://giaoduc.net.vn/truong-cong-clc-tien-tien-neu…
[4] https://lifestyle.znews.vn/thay-co-viet-ke-chuyen-an-tet…
Over the past two years, I have supervised Edward Lester for his Master’s thesis, which he successfully defended on “Examining the Impact of Stochastic Gradient Descent on Cost Functions in Traffic and Pedestrian Flow Models.” Edward and I have also completed a research paper titled “Stochastic Gradient Calibration of Neural Network–Driven Interacting Particle Systems.” Congratulations, Edward! (August 2025).
A special moment at Stanford University (April 7, 2025) – visiting and collaborating with my dear friend and colleague Lewei Zhao. Our collaboration goes back to our PhD years at Wayne State University (2016–2021), where we shared an office and many academic milestones. We are currently working on an optimization problem for proton beam delivery time in cancer therapy, with a particular focus on brain tumors. Unlike conventional photon (X-ray) radiation, proton therapy benefits from the Bragg peak, allowing high energy deposition directly at the tumor while minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue. This makes proton therapy especially effective for pediatric cancers and tumors near sensitive organs such as the brain, eyes, and spinal cord. We hope to obtain promising results soon and share them in a future research publication.
(Fun detail: Lewei deliberately wore his Wayne State University shirt – a nod to where our PhD journey began.)
It is my great pleasure to be invited by my former colleague, Dr. Maria Han Veiga, to present my research on Optimization and Data Science at the Department of Mathematics at Ohio State University. Maria and I were colleagues at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. We joined UM-AA the same year and left the same year. She’s now an Assistant Professor in the Math Department at OSU, March 2025.
Quy Nhon University, Time: 2:00 – 4:00 PM, Saturday, December 21, 2024.
Can Tho University, Time: 10:00 – 11:30, Monday, December 16, 2024.
University of Science, VNU-HCM, Time: 09:00 – 11:00, Thursday, December 12, 2024, introducing the Joint PhD program UCI and SDSU.
It is my great pleasure to be invited to present a talk at one of the largest International Joint Meetings, co-organized by the Unione Matematica Italiana (UMI) and the American Mathematical Society (AMS), after 22 years, with more than 1500 participants, July 22-26, 2024.
Visit and work my collaborators at University of Paris-Saclay, July 2024.
Giving a talk at the Optimization Seminar in the Department of Mathematics, University of California, San Diego.
From left to right: My student, Anthony Cortez; me; Xiaomeng Hu, a 3rd-year PhD student at UCSD; and Professor Jiawang Nie, a Mathematics Professor at UCSD.
I co-organized the Midwest Optimization Meeting 2023 – University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
LAWOC aims to boost the development and interaction between Optimization and Control in Latin America, Chile, January, 2023.
24th Midwest Optimization Meeting, MOM24, & Workshop on Large Scale Optimization and Applications. Hosted by the University of Waterloo, Canada, October 28-29, 2022.
University of Chicago, July 2022.
Organizer of the mini-symposium Variational Analysis and Optimization 2022 SIAM Great Lakes Section Annual Meeting, Wayne State University, MI, United States, September 24, 2022.
ICCOPT 2019, the Sixth International Conference on Continuous Optimization, Technical University (TU) of Berlin, Germany, August 3-8, 2019.
Control of State-Constrained Dynamical Systems (School and Workshop), 24 – 27 September 2019, Valparaíso, Chile.
Dipartimento di Matematica, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy, July, 2019 (Invited Talk).
9th International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM 2019), July 15 – 19, 2019, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain (Invited Talk).
Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China, June 22-25, 2019 (Invited Talk).
SIAM Conference on Control and Its Applications (CT19), Chengdu, China, June 19 – 21, 2019.
Vietnam-USA Joint Mathematical Meeting, Quy Nhon, Vietnam, June 10 – 13, 2019 (Invited Talk).
Award ceremony 2018-2019, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA.
Graduate and Postdoctoral Research Symposium (Present and judge for doctor’s section), Tuesday, March 5, 2019, Wayne State University.
2018 NSF-CBMS: Computational Methods in Optimal Control. http://www.siue.edu/~juliu/cbms18/
Midwest Optimization Meeting 2018 at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
Special Session on Nonsmooth Optimization and Applications, AMS Spring 2018 Western Sectional Meeting (04/2018), Portland, OR:
The 2018 SIAM Great Lakes Section Annual Meeting on April 21, 2018.
Graduate and Postdoctoral Research Symposium (Present and judge for doctor’s section), Tuesday, March 6, 2018, Wayne State University, Second place winner.
The 19th Midwest Optimization Meeting, Oakland University, Rochester, MI, Saturday, October 21st, 2017.
