Welcome to my homepage!

My name is Matias Villagra and I am a Postdoctoral Associate at the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and the MIT Sloan School of Management, where I work with Andy Sun. I earned my PhD in Operations Research from Columbia University, where I was advised by Dan Bienstock and Yuri Faenza.

I develop optimization models and algorithms for decision-making problems of societal relevance, particularly in power systems. My aim is to make these methods computationally scalable and theoretically sound.

In power systems, I am interested in tackling key challenges in grid operations and electricity markets, including the integration of renewable generation and energy storage, as well as power system resilience.

I also investigate structural features of optimization problems, such as symmetry. In integer programming, I analyze how symmetry affects algorithmic performance and the strength of mathematical relaxations, with the goal of developing symmetry-aware optimization methods.

Reach me at: matiasjv [at] mit [.] edu