Virginia Joanne Torczon is an American

applied 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 One ...

and

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

known for her research on

nonlinear optimization In mathematics, nonlinear programming (NLP) is the process of solving an optimization problem where some of the constraints or the objective function are nonlinear. An optimization problem is one of calculation of the extrema (maxima, minima or sta ...

methods including pattern search. She is dean of graduate studies and research, and chancellor professor of computer science, at the

College of William & Mary The College of William & Mary (officially The College of William and Mary in Virginia, abbreviated as William & Mary, W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. Founded in 1693 by letters patent issued by King William III ...

Education and career

Torczon majored in history as an undergraduate at

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

. She earned her Ph.D. in mathematical sciences in 1989 from

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranke ...

. Her dissertation, ''Multi-Directional Search: a Direct Search Algorithm for Parallel Machines'', was supervised by

John E. Dennis John Emory Dennis, Jr. (born 1939) is an American mathematician who has made major contributions in mathematical optimization. Dennis is currently a Noah Harding professor emeritus and research professor in the department of computational and app ...

. Before becoming dean of graduate studies and research at William & Mary, she was the first female chair of the computer science department there.

Recognition

Torczon's paper "On the Convergence of Pattern Search Algorithms" won the inaugural

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

(SIAM) Outstanding Paper Prize for the best paper published in a SIAM journal in 1999.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Torczon, Virginia Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians American computer scientists American women computer scientists Wesleyan University alumni Rice University alumni College of William & Mary faculty 21st-century American women