Ruriko (Rudy) Yoshida is a Japanese-American mathematician and statistician whose research topics have ranged from abstract mathematical problems in

algebraic combinatorics Algebraic combinatorics is an area of mathematics that employs methods of abstract algebra, notably group theory and representation theory, in various combinatorial contexts and, conversely, applies combinatorial techniques to problems in algeb ...

to optimized camera placement in

sensor network Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) refer to networks of spatially dispersed and dedicated sensors that monitor and record the physical conditions of the environment and forward the collected data to a central location. WSNs can measure environmental c ...

s and the

phylogenomics Phylogenomics is the intersection of the fields of evolution and genomics. The term has been used in multiple ways to refer to analysis that involves genome data and evolutionary reconstructions. It is a group of techniques within the larger field ...

fungi A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately from ...

. She works at the

Naval Postgraduate School The Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) is a public graduate school operated by the United States Navy and located in Monterey, California. It offers master’s and doctoral degrees in more than 70 fields of study to the U.S. Armed Forces, DOD ci ...

Monterey, California Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under bo ...

as a professor of

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve deci ...

. She was promoted as a rank of professor on July 1st 2023.

Early life and education

Yoshida grew up in Japan. Despite a love of mathematics that began in middle school, she was discouraged from studying mathematics by her teachers, and in response dropped out of her Japanese high school and took the high school equivalency examination instead. In order to continue her study of mathematics, she moved to the US, and after studying at a junior college, transferred to 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 ...

. Her parents, who had been supporting her financially, stopped their support when they learned that she was studying mathematics instead of business, and she put herself through school working both as a grader in the mathematics department and in the university's police department. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 2000. She went to the

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...

for graduate study, under the supervision of Jesús A. De Loera. De Loera had been a student of Berkeley professor

Bernd Sturmfels Bernd Sturmfels (born March 28, 1962 in Kassel, West Germany) is a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley and is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig sin ...

, and Yoshida also considers Sturmfels to be an academic mentor. Part of her work there involved implementing a method of Alexander Barvinok for counting integer points in convex polyhedra by decomposing the input into cones, and her 2004 dissertation was ''Barvinok's Rational Functions: Algorithms and Applications to Optimization, Statistics, and Algebra''.

Career

After completing her doctorate, Yoshida returned to the University of California, Berkeley as a postdoctoral researcher, working with

Lior Pachter Lior Samuel Pachter is a computational biologist. He works at the California Institute of Technology, where he is the Bren Professor of Computational Biology. He has widely varied research interests including genomics, combinatorics, computational ...

in the Center for Pure and Applied Mathematics, and then went to

Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...

for more postdoctoral research as an assistant research professor of mathematics, working with Mark L. Huber. She became an assistant professor of statistics at the

University of Kentucky The University of Kentucky (UK, UKY, or U of K) is a Public University, public Land-grant University, land-grant research university in Lexington, Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentu ...

in 2006, and was promoted to a tenured associate professor in 2012. In 2016 she moved to her present position at the Naval Postgraduate School, moving there in part to be closer to her husband's family in Northern California. She has also returned to Japan as a visitor to the

Institute of Statistical Mathematics An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can ...

. She is also known as a superb teacher of mathematics and statistics as is testified by the provost's announcement and the list of her students .

References

External links

Home page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Yoshida, Ruriko Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Japanese emigrants to the United States 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians American women statisticians Japanese mathematicians Japanese women mathematicians Japanese statisticians Operations researchers University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, Davis alumni University of Kentucky faculty Naval Postgraduate School faculty American academics of Japanese descent 21st-century American women