Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon is an American computer scientist, professor, author, and champion

aerobatic Aerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in conventional passenger-carrying flights. The term is a portmanteau of "aerial" and "acrobatics". Aerobatics are performed in aeroplanes and glid ...

pilot who is best known as the co-inventor (with

Raimund Seidel Raimund G. Seidel is a German and Austrian theoretical computer scientist and an expert in computational geometry. Seidel was born in Graz, Austria, and studied with Hermann Maurer at the Graz University of Technology. He received his M. Sc. in 19 ...

) of the

treap In computer science, the treap and the randomized binary search tree are two closely related forms of binary search tree data structures that maintain a dynamic set of ordered keys and allow binary searches among the keys. After any sequence of in ...

data structure, a type of

binary search tree In computer science, a binary search tree (BST), also called an ordered or sorted binary tree, is a rooted binary tree data structure with the key of each internal node being greater than all the keys in the respective node's left subtree and ...

that orders nodes by adding a priority as well as a key to each node. She is also known for her work in data-intensive science and visual analytics of very large data sets, for which she received the prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

Education

Aragon received her B.S. in mathematics from the

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...

in 1982, M.S. from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1987 and, Ph.D. in computer science from the same institution in 2004. For her doctoral studies, Aragon worked under the direction of Marti Hearst.

Career

She is a professor in the Department of Human Centered Design and 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 Seattle a ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

. Her research interests in the field of human-centered data science include

eScience E-Science or eScience is computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science that uses immense data sets that require grid computing; the term sometimes includes technologies that enable dis ...

, scientific and information visualization, visual analytics, image processing, collaborative creativity, analysis of spontaneous text communication, dynamic affect detection, and games for good. Prior to her appointment at UW, she was a computer scientist and data scientist at

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

for six years and

NASA Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

for nine years, and before that, an airshow and test pilot, entrepreneur, and member of the United States Aerobatic Team.

Presidential Early Career Award

On July 9, 2009, Aragon received a

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. The White ...

, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. She was recognized for "seminal research in workflow management and visual analytics for data-intensive scientific research, including the development of the Fourier contour analysis algorithm and Sunfall."

Aerobatic career

Aragon first won a slot on the United States Aerobatic Team in 1991. She holds the record for shortest time from first solo in an airplane to membership on the US Team (less than six years), and was also the first Latina to win a slot on the Team. A team member from 1991 to 1994, she was a bronze medalist at the 1993 U.S. National Aerobatic Championships and the 1994 World Aerobatic Championships. She has also won over 70 trophies in regional aerobatic competitions at the Unlimited level and was California State Unlimited Aerobatic Champion in 1990. Aragon has also flown

airshow An air show (or airshow, air fair, air tattoo) is a public event where aircraft are exhibited. They often include aerobatics demonstrations, without they are called "static air shows" with aircraft parked on the ground. The largest air show m ...

s (as distinct from aerobatic competitions) professionally since 1990. Aragon has been a flight instructor since 1987. In 1989, she founded one of the first aerobatic and tailwheel flight schools in Northern California. Aragon helped develop an "unusual attitude recovery training", whereby flight students are taught how to recover from emergency situations in flight. Between 1987 and 2008, she was a flight instructor at Oakland, Livermore, and Tracy Airports, giving over 2400 hours of flight instruction and over 3000 hours of ground instruction.

Autobiography

In September 2020, Aragon's memoir, ''Flying Free,'' was published by Blackstone Publishing. Her autobiography was listed in September 2020 Ms. Magazine book list. Her book won the 2021 PNWA Nancy Pearl award.

Bibliography

Selected scientific papers

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Non-science non-fiction books

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Short stories (fiction)

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Newspaper

References

External links

Official website

''NOVA.'' PBS. (Aired February 1, 1994; contains footage and interview with Aragon.)

including links to source code and original papers * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Aragon, Cecilia R. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Aerobatic pilots California Institute of Technology alumni People from West Lafayette, Indiana American women computer scientists University of California, Berkeley alumni University of Washington faculty American aviation record holders American flight instructors American women flight instructors American women aviation record holders 21st-century American women scientists American computer scientists 21st-century American scientists American women academics