Anna Catherine Gilbert (born 1972) is an American mathematician who works as the Herman Goldstine Collegiate Professor of Mathematics at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. She also holds a courtesy appointment in electrical engineering and computer science at Michigan. Her research expertise is in

randomized algorithm A randomized algorithm is an algorithm that employs a degree of randomness as part of its logic or procedure. The algorithm typically uses uniformly random bits as an auxiliary input to guide its behavior, in the hope of achieving good performan ...

s for

harmonic analysis Harmonic analysis is a branch of mathematics concerned with the representation of Function (mathematics), functions or signals as the Superposition principle, superposition of basic waves, and the study of and generalization of the notions of Fo ...

image processing An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, and scientific measurements. Signal processing techniq ...

, and large data sets..

Education and career

Gilbert earned a bachelor's degree from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1993, and completed her Ph.D. in 1997 from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

under the supervision of

Ingrid Daubechies Baroness Ingrid Daubechies ( ; ; born 17 August 1954) is a Belgian physicist and mathematician. She is best known for her work with wavelets in image compression. Daubechies is recognized for her study of the mathematical methods that enhance i ...

. After postdoctoral research at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

, she joined

AT&T Labs AT&T Labs is the research & development division of AT&T, the telecommunications company. It employs some 1,800 people in various locations, including: Bedminster NJ; Middletown, NJ; Manhattan, NY; Warrenville, IL; Austin, TX; Dallas, TX; Atlan ...

, and continued there as a staff member until 2004, when she moved to Michigan.

Research

Gilbert's research discoveries have included the existence of

multifractal A multifractal system is a generalization of a fractal system in which a single exponent (the fractal dimension) is not enough to describe its dynamics; instead, a continuous spectrum of exponents (the so-called singularity spectrum) is needed. ...

behavior in TCP-based internet traffic, the development of

streaming algorithm In computer science, streaming algorithms are algorithms for processing data streams in which the input is presented as a sequence of items and can be examined in only a few passes (typically just one). In most models, these algorithms have access ...

s based on random projections for aggregating information from large data streams using very small amounts of working memory, and a foundational analysis of the ability of orthogonal

matching pursuit Matching pursuit (MP) is a sparse approximation algorithm which finds the "best matching" projections of multidimensional data onto the span of an over-complete (i.e., redundant) dictionary D. The basic idea is to approximately represent a signal ...

to recover sparse signals with her student

Joel Tropp Joel Aaron Tropp (born July 1977 in Austin, Texas) is the Steele Family Professor of Applied and Computational Mathematics in the Computing and Mathematical Sciences Department at the California Institute of Technology. He is known for work on spa ...

Recognition

She became a

Sloan Fellow The Sloan Fellows program is the world's first mid-career and senior career master's degree in general management and leadership. It was initially supported by a grant from Alfred P. Sloan, the late CEO of General Motors, to his alma mater, MIT ...

in 2006. In 2008, she was awarded the

NAS Award for Initiatives in Research The William O. Baker Award for Initiatives in Research, previously the NAS Award for Initiatives in Research, is awarded annually by the National Academy of Sciences "to recognize innovative young scientists and to encourage research likely to lea ...

and the Association for Computing Machinery Douglas Engelbart Award. In 2013 she won the Ralph E. Kleinman Prize of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

"for her creative and deep contributions to the mathematics of signal processing, data analysis and communications". She was an

invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians This is a list of International Congresses of Mathematicians Plenary and Invited Speakers. Being invited to talk at an International Congress of Mathematicians has been called "the equivalent, in this community, of an induction to a hall of fame." ...

in 2014, speaking on "Mathematics in Science and Technology". She gave the von Neuman Lecture at the 2022

Joint Mathematics Meeting The Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM) is a mathematics conference hosted annually in early January by the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Frequently, several other national mathematics organizations also participate. The meeting is the largest ...

, titled "Metric representations: Algorithms and Geometry."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gilbert, Anna Catharine 1972 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American computer scientists American women mathematicians American women computer scientists University of Chicago alumni Princeton University alumni University of Michigan faculty 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians 20th-century American women 21st-century American women