Jon Van Laarhoven earned his Ph.D. in applied mathematics and computational sciences in May 2009. His research was focused on continuous and discrete optimization, exact algorithms for NP-hard problems, heuristic search, mathematical modeling, and computational geometry.

Van Laarhoven was the recipient of the Graduate College’s top funding award, a Presidential Graduate Fellowship. He also served as a teaching assistant for a linear algebra workshop and as a graduate student mentor to an undergraduate research group. For his efforts, he received the UI’s Outstanding Teaching Assistant of the Year Award in 2008.