Valentina Harizanov is a

Serbian-American Serbian Americans ( sr, / ) or American Serbs (), are Americans of Serb ethnic ancestry. As of 2013, there were about 190,000 American citizens who identified as having Serb ancestry. However, the number may be significantly higher, as there w ...

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

and professor of mathematics at

The George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , preside ...

. Her main research contributions are in computable structure theory (roughly at the intersection of

computability theory Computability theory, also known as recursion theory, is a branch of mathematical logic, computer science, and the theory of computation that originated in the 1930s with the study of computable functions and Turing degrees. The field has since e ...

and

model theory In mathematical logic, model theory is the study of the relationship between formal theories (a collection of sentences in a formal language expressing statements about a mathematical structure), and their models (those structures in which the s ...

), where she introduced the notion of degree spectra of relations on computable structures and obtained the first significant results concerning uncountable, countable, and finite

Turing degree In computer science and mathematical logic the Turing degree (named after Alan Turing) or degree of unsolvability of a set of natural numbers measures the level of algorithmic unsolvability of the set. Overview The concept of Turing degree is fund ...

spectra. Her recent interests include

algorithmic learning theory Algorithmic learning theory is a mathematical framework for analyzing machine learning problems and algorithms. Synonyms include formal learning theory and algorithmic inductive inference. Algorithmic learning theory is different from statistica ...

and spaces of

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...

s on

group A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic iden ...

Education

She obtained her Bachelor of Science in mathematics in 1978 at the

University of Belgrade The University of Belgrade ( sr, / ) is a public university in Serbia. It is the oldest and largest modern university in Serbia. Founded in 1808 as the Belgrade Higher School in revolutionary Serbia, by 1838 it merged with the Kragujevac-b ...

and her Ph.D. in mathematics in 1987 at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...

under the direction of

Terry Millar Terrence Staples (Terry) Millar (September 18, 1948 – March 9, 2019) was professor emeritus of mathematics and former associate dean for physical sciences in the Graduate School and assistant to the provost at the University of Wisconsin–Madiso ...

Career

At The George Washington University, Harizanov was an

assistant professor Assistant Professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States and Canada. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doctoral degree and general ...

of mathematics from 1987 to 1993, an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

of mathematics from 1994 to 2002, and a professor of mathematics from 2003 to the present. She has held two

visiting professor In academia, a visiting scholar, visiting researcher, visiting fellow, visiting lecturer, or visiting professor is a scholar from an institution who visits a host university to teach, lecture, or perform research on a topic for which the visitor ...

positions, one in 1994 at the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Mary ...

and one in 2014 at the Kurt Gödel Research Center at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...

. Harizanov has co-directed the Center for Quantum Computing, Information, Logic, and Topology at The George Washington University since 2011.

Research

In 2009, Harizanov received a grant from the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

to research how algebraic, topological, and algorithmic properties of mathematical structures relate.

Awards and honors

Harizanov won the Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Prize for Faculty Scholarship from The George Washington University (GWU) in 2016. This award is presented each year to a

tenure Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...

d GWU faculty member to recognize outstanding research accomplishments. She was named MSRI Eisenbud Professor for Fall 2020.

Publications

Harizanov has over 40 publications in

peer-review Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

ed journals, including *V.S. Harizanov, "Some effects of Ash-Nerode and other decidability conditions on degree spectra " Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 55 (1), pp. 51–65 (1991), cited 21 times according to Web of Science In addition, she has published the following book-length survey paper and co-edited, co-authored book: *V.S. Harizanov, “Pure computable model theory,” in the volume: Handbook of Recursive Mathematics, vol. 1, Yu.L. Ershov, S.S. Goncharov, A. Nerode, and J.B. Remmel, editors (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 3–114. *M. Friend, N.B. Goethe, and V.S. Harizanov, Induction, Algorithmic Learning Theory, and Philosophy, Series: Logic, Epistemology, and the Unity of Science, vol. 9, Springer, Dordrecht, 304 pp., 2007. Degree spectra of relations are introduced and first studied in Harizanov's dissertation: ''Degree Spectrum of a Recursive Relation on a Recursive Structure''(1987).

References

External links

Valentina Harizanov's home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harizanov, Valentina 20th-century American mathematicians Serbian mathematicians George Washington University faculty American logicians Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of Belgrade Faculty of Mathematics alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni 21st-century American mathematicians 21st-century American women mathematicians