The When Diet:

About the Author, Todd Easton, Ph.D.

Throughout his life, Todd Easton has been inquisitive and enjoyed solving problems. Effective problem solving requires the introduction and evaluation of ideas. Mathematics provides a quantifiable method to assess the value of an idea and also supplies knowledge to create new ideas. So he went to Brigham Young University and earned a B.S. in Mathematics with a minor in Statistics (1993).

While in his senior year of college, Todd took a class in operations research. He fell in love with the subject of finding a provably optimal solution to a problem. He continued to pursue an education in this area and earned an M.S. in Operations Research at Stanford University (1994) and a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology (1999). Todd worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Georgia Institute of Technology 1999 - 2001 and then moved to Manhattan, Kansas where he is currently teaching many students how to properly define and optimize problems as an Associate Professor in the Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering Department at Kansas State University.

While earning tenure, Todd became chunky and needed to diet. After failing several diets, it became evident that dieting is a problem, so he optimized it. The weight loss results were so impressive that he wrote this book to record his thoughts about losing weight. Currently, Todd spends most of his time at work or with his family. At work Todd’s primary area of research is combinatorial optimization with an emphasis in integer programming and graph theory. These problems are typically hard to solve and provide numerous avenues of research where he can use his problem solving skills. Away from work, Todd spends most of his time playing with his children, but also finds time to coach his children’s sports teams, play sports and complete do-it-yourself projects around his house.