Sally Ann Goldman is an American computer scientist specializing in

computational learning theory In computer science, computational learning theory (or just learning theory) is a subfield of artificial intelligence devoted to studying the design and analysis of machine learning algorithms. Overview Theoretical results in machine learning m ...

. She was a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...

, and Edwin H. Murty Professor of Engineering, before leaving academia to join Google Research. She is also a successful amateur

powerlifter Powerlifting is a strength sport that consists of three attempts at maximal weight on three lifts: squat, bench press, and deadlift. As in the sport of Olympic weightlifting, it involves the athlete attempting a maximal weight single-lift effor ...

Education and career

Goldman is originally from

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

. She majored in computer science at

Brown University Brown University is a private research university in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, founded in 1764 as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providenc ...

, and then went to the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

(MIT) for graduate study in computer science. She completed her Ph.D. there in 1990, with the dissertation ''Learning Binary Relations, Total Orders, and Read-Once Formulas'' supervised by

Ron Rivest Ronald Linn Rivest (; born May 6, 1947) is a cryptographer and an Institute Professor at MIT. He is a member of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a member of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intell ...

. As a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis, she became Edwin H. Murty Professor of Engineering before leaving academia in 2008 to work for Google Research.

Personal life

Goldman was married to Kenneth J. Goldman, also a computer scientist from St. Louis with whom she went to Brown and MIT; he also became a faculty member at Washington University and a researcher for Google. He died of cancer in 2020. After moving to the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

to work for Google, Goldman took up amateur

powerlifting Powerlifting is a strength sport that consists of three attempts at maximal weight on three lifts: squat, bench press, and deadlift. As in the sport of Olympic weightlifting, it involves the athlete attempting a maximal weight single-lift effor ...

, and has won her division and weight class in multiple national and world championships held by

USA Powerlifting USA Powerlifting (USAPL) is a national powerlifting organization in the United States The USAPL sanctions local, regional and national meets in the country. The current president of the USAPL is Larry Maile. The USAPL is a drug tested organiza ...

(USAPL), the United States Powerlifting Association (USPA), and the International Powerlifting League (IPL).

Book

Goldman is the coauthor, with Ken Goldman, of an undergraduate textbook, ''A Practical Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms using Java'' (CRC Press, 2007).

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Goldman, Sally Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American computer scientists American women computer scientists Brown University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Washington University in St. Louis faculty