Dana Randall

Last updated
Dana Randall
Born
Education
Relatives Lisa Randall (sister)
AwardsFellow of the American Mathematical Society,
Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery,
Outstanding Service Award, Georgia Tech [1]
Scientific career
Fields Theoretical computer science
Institutions Georgia Institute of Technology
Thesis Counting in Lattices: Some Combinatorial Problems from Statistical Mechanics  (1994)
Doctoral advisor Alistair Sinclair

Dana Randall is an American computer scientist. She is a professor of computer science and adjunct professor of mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also an external professor of the Santa Fe Institute. [2] Previously she was executive director of the Georgia Tech Institute of Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) that she co-founded, [3] director of the Algorithms and Randomness Center, [4] and served as the ADVANCE Professor of Computing. Her research areas include combinatorics, computational aspects of statistical mechanics, Monte Carlo stimulation of Markov chains, randomized algorithms and programmable active matter.

Contents

Education

Randall was born in Queens, New York to a Jewish family. [5] [6] Her mother was a teacher and her father was an engineer who worked in sales. [7] She graduated from New York City's Stuyvesant High School in 1984. [8] She received her A.B. in Mathematics from Harvard University in 1988 and her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1994 under the supervision of Alistair Sinclair. [9]

Her sister is theoretical physicist Lisa Randall. [10]

Research

Her primary research interest is analyzing algorithms for counting problems (e.g. counting matchings in a graph) using Markov chains. One of her important contributions to this area is a decomposition theorem for analyzing Markov chains.[ citation needed ]

Accolades

In 2012 she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. [11] She was named as an ACM Fellow, in the 2024 class of fellows, "for contributions to the theory of Markov chains and programmable active matter". [12]

She delivered the Arnold Ross Lecture on October 29, 2009, an honor previously conferred on Barry Mazur, Elwyn Berlekamp, Ken Ribet, Manjul Bhargava, David Kelly and Paul Sally. [13]

Publications

References

  1. "Dana Randall wins Institute outstanding service award". Math.gatech.edu. Retrieved 2013-06-08.
  2. "Dana Randall". Santa Fe Institute. Archived from the original on 25 September 2020. Retrieved 9 February 2020.
  3. "Institute for Data Engineering and Science".
  4. "Algorithms and Randomness Center".
  5. Joseph, M. (2013-09-28). "GLADYS RANDALL Obituary (2013)". Legacy.com.
  6. "Paid Notice: Deaths RANDALL, RICHARD C." The New York Times. 2000-03-31.
  7. "The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts Episode 115: Lisa Randall" (PDF).
  8. "Stuyvesant Math Team, Spring 1983". 173.8.135.113. Archived from the original on 2011-05-29. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
  9. "Dana Randall : CV". People.math.gatech.edu. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  10. Rosenman, Evan T.R. (June 2, 2009). "Class of 1984: Lisa Randall Randall's Theory Increases Number of Dimensions in Physical Universe". Harvard Crimson . Retrieved July 3, 2025.
  11. "American Mathematical Society". Ams.org. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  12. "2024 ACM Fellows Honored for Contributions to Computing That Are Transforming Science and Society". Association for Computing Machinery. January 22, 2025. Retrieved 2025-01-22.
  13. "AMS Ross Lectures". Ams.org. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
  14. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2012-10-04.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)