Emma Haruka Iwao is a Japanese computer scientist and cloud developer advocate at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. In 2019 Haruka Iwao calculated the then world record for most accurate value of pi (π); which included 31.4 trillion digits, exceeding the previous record of 22 trillion. This record was surpassed in 2020 by Timothy Mullican who calculated 50 trillion digits, but she reclaimed the record in 2022 with 100 trillion digits. She identifies as queer.

Early life and education

As a child, Iwao became interested in pi. She was inspired by Japanese mathematicians, including

Yasumasa Kanada was a Japanese computer scientist most known for his numerous world records over the past three decades for calculating digits of . He set the record 11 of the past 21 times. Kanada was a professor in the Department of Information Science at ...

. She studied

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

at the

University of Tsukuba is a public research university located in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. It is a top 10 Designated National University, and was ranked Type A by the Japanese government as part of the Top Global University Project. The university has 28 colle ...

, where she was taught by

Daisuke Takahashi is a common masculine Japanese given name. Possible writings Daisuke can be written using different kanji characters and can mean: *大輔, "big, assist" *大介, "big, mediate" *大祐, "big, bless" *大助, "big, help" *大典, "big, law/rule ...

. She was awarded the Dean's Award for Excellence in 2008, before starting graduate studies in computing. Her master's dissertation considered high performance computer systems. After graduating, Iwao took on several software engineering positions, working on site reliability for

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...

GREE GREE (derived from an abbreviation of the " Six degrees of separation" concept) is a Japanese social networking service founded by Yoshikazu Tanaka and operated by GREE, Inc. GREE focuses primarily on mobile games and over ninety percent of it ...

and Red Hat.

Career

Iwao joined

as a Cloud Developer Advocate in 2015. She originally worked for Google in Tokyo, before moving to

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 ...

in 2019. Iwao offers training in the use of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), as well as supporting application developers. She works to make

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...

accessible for everyone, creating online demos and teaching materials. In March 2019 Iwao calculated the value of pi to 31,415,926,535,897 digits (Equal to ), using 170

terabyte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

s (TB) of data. The calculation used a multithreaded program called y-cruncher using over 25 machines for 121 days.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iwao, Emma Haruka Japanese women mathematicians Japanese women computer scientists World record holders Living people Year of birth missing (living people) University of Tsukuba alumni Japanese LGBT scientists Queer women Queer scientists Japanese emigrants to the United States Google employees Pi-related people

Early life and education

Career

See also

References