What Can Be More Important Than "Faster" and "Bigger"?

	IT Eminent Lecture Series
	What Can Be More Important Than "Faster" and "Bigger"?
	Margaret H. Wright, New York University
	Silver Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics
	Coates Hall 145 January 26, 2009 - 02:30 pm
Abstract: For decades, the high-end computing community has come to expect continuing gains in the speed of computation and the size of data storage, and these expectations have consistently been fulfilled in remarkable ways. But "faster" and "bigger" are not the only things that count. We'll show how other factors, such as advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science, are just as important, leading to the obvious conclusion that an optimal strategy needs to be "faster, bigger, and smarter."

Speaker's Bio: Margaret H. Wright is Silver Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, and Chair of the Computer Science Department. Before joining NYU in 2002, she worked at Bell Laboratories (Lucent Technologies), where she was named a Bell Labs Fellow. She received her B.S. in Mathematics and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Her research interests include optimization, scientific computing, and optimization in real-world applications. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (1997), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001), and the National Academy of Sciences (2005). In 2000 she received an honorary doctorate in mathematics from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and, in 2008, an Honorary Doctorate of Technology from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm. She served as president of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) during 1995-96, and has also served on its Council and Board of Trustee. She was editor-in-chief of SIAM Review from 1997--2004, and is an associate editor of Mathematical Programming, the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, and the SIAM Journal on Optimization. She is currently a member of the advisory committee for the National Science Foundation's Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), the Board of Governors of the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications (Minnesota), and the Scientific Advisory Board of Matheon (a mathematics institute in Berlin, Germany). In addition, she chaired the advisory committee for the National Science Foundation's Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences and the 2006 Nevanlinna Prize Committee of the International Mathematical Union. She served on the President's Committee on the National Medal of Science and the National Science Foundation Blue Ribbon Panel on Cyberinfrastructure.

Refreshments will be served.
This lecture has a reception.

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