Carola Wenk (born 1973) is a German-American computer scientist known for her research on algorithms for finding similarities between geometric shapes, such as matching vehicle trajectories to road networks, comparing trajectories with each other using

Fréchet distance In mathematics, the Fréchet distance is a measure of similarity between curves that takes into account the location and ordering of the points along the curves. It is named after Maurice Fréchet. Intuitive definition Imagine a person traversing ...

, or testing similarity for gel electrophoresis data. Her work has also involved biomedical applications of geometric algorithms, including the use of

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

to diagnose

glaucoma Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that result in damage to the optic nerve (or retina) and cause vision loss. The most common type is open-angle (wide angle, chronic simple) glaucoma, in which the drainage angle for fluid within the eye rem ...

. She is a professor of computer science at

Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private university, private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into ...

Education and career

Wenk is originally from

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

. She earned a diploma in mathematics in 1998 at the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

with the thesis ''Algorithmen für das Crossdating in der Dendrochronologie (Algorithms for Crossdating in Dendrochronology)'' supervised by

Helmut Alt Helmut Alt (born 1950) is a German computer scientist whose research concerns graph algorithms and computational geometry. He is known for his work on matching geometric shapes, including methods for efficiently computing the Fréchet distance be ...

. She continued to work with Alt at the Free University of Berlin and in 2002 completed a doctorate in computer science (

Dr. rer. nat. ''Doctor rerum naturalium'' ( for, , Latin, doctor of natural sciences, lit. 'doctor of the things of nature'), abbreviated Dr. rer. nat., is a doctoral academic degree awarded by universities in some European countries (e.g. Germany, Austria and C ...

) with the dissertation ''Shape Matching in Higher Dimensions''. After postdoctoral research with Alon Efrat at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

, Wenk joined the faculty at the University of Texas at San Antonio in 2004. She chaired the faculty senate of the university from 2010 to 2012. As faculty senate chair, she oversaw a change in the university grading system to allow plus and minus modifiers in letter grades, and a policy to reduce the use of paper by making all campus printers and copiers double-sided. She moved to

in 2012, and was promoted to full professor in 2017. At Tulane, she also holds an adjunct position in the mathematics department.

Book

With Mahmuda Ahmed, Sophia Karagiorgou, and Dieter Pfoser, Wenk is the co-author of the book ''Map Construction Algorithms'' (Springer, 2015).

References

External links

Home page
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Map Construction Algorithms
book home page {{DEFAULTSORT:Wenk, Carola 1973 births Living people German computer scientists American computer scientists American women computer scientists Researchers in geometric algorithms Free University of Berlin alumni University of Texas at San Antonio faculty Tulane University faculty American women academics 21st-century American women