Virginia Torczon

Virginia Joanne Torczon is an American applied mathematician and computer scientist known for her research on nonlinear optimization methods including pattern search. She is dean of graduate studies and research, and chancellor professor of computer science, at the College of William & Mary.[1]

Education and career

Torczon majored in history as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University.[2] She earned her Ph.D. in mathematical sciences in 1989 from Rice University.[2][3] Her dissertation, Multi-Directional Search: a Direct Search Algorithm for Parallel Machines, was supervised by John E. Dennis.[3]

Before becoming dean of graduate studies and research at William & Mary, she was the first female chair of the computer science department there.[4]

Recognition

Torczon's paper "On the Convergence of Pattern Search Algorithms" won the inaugural Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Outstanding Paper Prize for the best paper published in a SIAM journal in 1999.[5]

References

  1. ^ "Virginia Torczon", Computer Science Faculty, College of William & Mary, retrieved 2021-02-18
  2. ^ a b "Virginia Torczon", Parallel Profile, Parallel Computing Research, 5 (1), Winter 1997
  3. ^ a b Virginia Torczon at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  4. ^ Berard, Adrienne (November 11, 2018), "Women in computer science: Taking the 'brogrammer' out of the algorithm", Williamsburg Yorktown Daily
  5. ^ The SIAM Outstanding Paper Prizes, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, retrieved 2021-02-18