Anna R. Karlin is an American computer scientist, the Microsoft Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

Biography

Karlin was born into an academic family. Her father, Samuel Karlin, was a mathematician at Stanford University, and her brother,

Kenneth Karlin Kenneth Karlin or just Karlin (born September 18, 1966) is a Danish songwriter and producer who is best known for his work with Carsten Schack, better known as Soulshock, forming the Los Angeles-based producer duo Soulshock & Karlin. They have wo ...

, is a professor of chemistry at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

. Karlin went to Stanford for her undergraduate studies, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1981.Curriculum vitae
retrieved 2012-02-23. She stayed at Stanford for graduate school, and earned Ph.D. in 1987 under the supervision of

Jeffrey Ullman Jeffrey David Ullman (born November 22, 1942) is an American computer scientist and the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Stanford University. His textbooks on compilers (various editions are popularly known as the d ...

. She continued to work near Stanford, at the

DEC Systems Research Center The Systems Research Center (SRC) was a research laboratory created by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1984, in Palo Alto, California. DEC SRC was founded by a group of computer scientists, led by Robert Taylor, who left the Computer ...

, for five years, before moving to the University of Washington in 1994. She was program chair of the IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science in 1997.Speaker biography
for Grace Hopper Lecture Series, University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science, retrieved 2012-02-23. Karlin was also one of the founding members of the rock music band Severe Tire Damage, and in 1993 as part of the band she participated in the first live music broadcast on the Internet.

Research

Karlin's research interests are in the design and analysis of

online algorithm In computer science, an online algorithm is one that can process its input piece-by-piece in a serial fashion, i.e., in the order that the input is fed to the algorithm, without having the entire input available from the start. In contrast, an o ...

s and randomized algorithms, which she has applied to problems in algorithmic game theory,

system software System software is software designed to provide a platform for other software. Examples of system software include operating systems (OS) like macOS, Linux, Android and Microsoft Windows, computational science software, game engines, search engin ...

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed computing is a field of computer sci ...

, and data mining. She has written heavily cited papers on the use of randomized packet markings to perform IP traceback, competitive analysis of

multiprocessor Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. There ar ...

cache coherence algorithms, unified algorithms for simultaneously managing all levels of the memory hierarchy, web proxy servers, and

hash table In computing, a hash table, also known as hash map, is a data structure that implements an associative array or dictionary. It is an abstract data type that maps keys to values. A hash table uses a hash function to compute an ''index'', ...

s with constant worst-case lookup time.

Awards and honors

In 2012, Karlin was named as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. In 2016 she became a fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

. She was awarded the 2020 ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award, "For the discovery and analysis of balanced allocations, known as the power of two choices, and their extensive applications to practice." She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021 and to the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

in 2022.

Selected publications

*. *. *. *. *. *. *.Reviews of ''Game Theory, Alive'': * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Karlin, Anna R. Living people 1960 births American computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists American women computer scientists Stanford University alumni Digital Equipment Corporation people University of Washington faculty Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Game theorists American women academics 21st-century American women