Robyn Anne Owens is an Australian applied mathematician and computer scientist known for her research in computer vision and face recognition, [1] and on the non-invasive imaging of lactation. [2] Formerly a professor at the University of Western Australia (UWA) and the deputy vice-chancellor for research at UWA, she retired in 2019, [3] and remains affiliated with UWA as a professorial fellow. [4]
Owens earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics (with honours) at the University of Western Australia and a doctorate in mathematics at the Somerville College, Oxford. [5] Her 1980 dissertation, Almost Periodic Hardy Spaces, was supervised by David Albert Edwards. [6] She returned to the University of Western Australia after postdoctoral study at Paris-Sud University. Before becoming vice-chancellor for research, she headed the UWA School of Computer Science & Software Engineering. [5]
With her co-author Peter E. Hartmann, she was a winner of the 2010 Rank Prize in Nutrition, given at the Royal College of Physicians in London, for their work on the imaging of lactation. [1] [2] [7]
Owens is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society, [5] a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (elected 2012), [5] [8] and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (elected 2020). [1] [9]
In the 2023 King's Birthday Honours Owens was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for "significant service to science in the fields of computer vision and mathematics". [10]
Akshay Venkatesh is an Australian-American mathematician and a professor at the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study. His research interests are in the fields of counting, equidistribution problems in automorphic forms and number theory, in particular representation theory, locally symmetric spaces, ergodic theory, and algebraic topology.
Cheryl Elisabeth Praeger is an Australian mathematician. Praeger received BSc (1969) and MSc degrees from the University of Queensland (1974), and a doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1973 under direction of Peter M. Neumann. She has published widely and has advised 27 PhD students. She is currently Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Western Australia. She is best known for her works in group theory, algebraic graph theory and combinatorial designs.
Margaret H. Wright is an American computer scientist and mathematician. She is a Silver Professor of Computer Science and former Chair of the Computer Science department at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, with research interests in optimization, linear algebra, and scientific computing. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997 for development of numerical optimization algorithms and for leadership in the applied mathematics community. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005. She was the first woman to serve as President of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.
Fay Gale AO was an Australian cultural geographer and an emeritus professor. She was an advocate of equal opportunity for women and for Aboriginal people.
Jennifer Tour Chayes is dean of the college of computing, data science, and society at the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining Berkeley, she was a technical fellow and managing director of Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which she founded in 2008, and Microsoft Research New York City, which she founded in 2012.
Nalini Joshi is an Australian mathematician. She is a professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney, the first woman in the School to hold this position, and is a past-president of the Australian Mathematical Society. Joshi is a member of the School's Applied Mathematics Research Group. Her research concerns integrable systems. She was awarded the Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship in 2012. Joshi is also the Vice-President of the International Mathematical Union, and is the first Australian to hold this position.
Anna Elizabeth Haebich, is an Australian writer, historian and academic.
Michelle Yvonne Simmons is an Australian quantum physicist, recognised for her foundational contributions to the field of atomic electronics.
Lynda Dent Beazley is a neuroscientist and educator based in Perth, Western Australia. She is currently an Honorary Distinguished Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Western Australia, and the Sir Walter Murdoch Distinguished Professor of Science at Murdoch University. Among other awards, she has been named an Officer of the Order of Australia for her contributions to medical science a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
Linda Ruth Petzold is a professor of computer science and mechanical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is also listed as affiliated faculty in the department of mathematics. Her research concerns differential algebraic equations and the computer simulation of large real-world social and biological networks.
Christobel Mary Saunders is a British-Australian oncologist and breast cancer specialist, who holds the position of Winthrop Professor of Surgical Oncology at the University of Western Australia.
Tatiana Toro is a Colombian-American mathematician at the University of Washington. Her research is "at the interface of geometric measure theory, harmonic analysis and partial differential equations". Toro was appointed director of the Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute for 2022–2027.
Karen Beauchemin is a federal scientist in Canada who is recognized as an international authority on methane emissions and ruminant nutrition. Her research helps develop farming techniques that improve how we raise cattle for meat and milk, while reducing the environmental impacts of livestock production.
Marcela Bilek is a Professor of Applied Physics and Surface Engineering at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research interests focus on the use of plasma related methods to synthesise thin film materials and modify surfaces and interfaces. She was named Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2012 and Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2015 for contributions to the science and application of plasma processes for materials modification and synthesis.
Ann Prentice, is a British nutritionist.
Sue O'Connor is an Australian archaeologist and Distinguished Professor in the School of Culture, History & Language at the Australian National University. Her research focuses primarily on the evidence of Pleistocene settlement and early human migration in the Indo-Pacific region.
Isabella Caroline McMillen is an Australian medical and health academic and was Chief Scientist of South Australia from October 2018 to August 2023. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales and a Bragg Member of the Royal Institution of Australia. She is a Director of Compass Housing Services Co Ltd, the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, the Australian Science Media Centre and a member of the Council of the University of South Australia.
The Rank Prizes comprise the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics and the Rank Prize for Nutrition. The prizes recognise, reward and encourage researchers working in the respective fields of optoelectronics and nutrition.