Rachel Ward is an American applied mathematician at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

. She is known for work on

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

, and

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing '' signals'', such as sound, images, and scientific measurements. Signal processing techniques are used to optimize transmissions, ...

. At the University of Texas, she is W. A. "Tex" Moncrief Distinguished Professor in Computational Engineering and Sciences—Data Science, and professor of mathematics.

Education

Ward received her BS in mathematics from the

in 2005. She earned her PhD in applied and computational mathematics from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

in 2009. Her PhD advisor was

Ingrid Daubechies Baroness Ingrid Daubechies ( ; ; born 17 August 1954) is a Belgian physicist and mathematician. She is best known for her work with wavelets in image compression. Daubechies is recognized for her study of the mathematical methods that enhance i ...

Career

Ward was an instructor at the Courant Institute from 2009-2011 and then joined faculty at the University of Texas at Austin in 2011. In 2018, she was a Visiting Research Scientist at

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

AI Research and in 2019 she was a Von Neumann Fellow at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...

. She serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM).

Awards and honors

Rachel Ward was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in Mathematics in 2012. Rachel Ward and Deanna Needell received the IMA Prize in Mathematics and Applications in 2016. Rachel Ward is an invited speaker at the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians.

Research

Ward worked on a project funded by the Department of Defense, with faculty from UT Austin's College of Natural Sciences and Cockrell School, to develop

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controlle ...

References

External links

UT Faculty Profile PageLearning Sparse High-Dimensional Governing Equations from Limited Data (Video)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ward, Rachel Living people American women mathematicians University of Texas at Austin faculty Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women