Faith Ellen (formerly known as Faith E. Fich) is a Canadian professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

who studies distributed

data structure In computer science, a data structure is a data organization and storage format that is usually chosen for Efficiency, efficient Data access, access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships amo ...

s and the theory of

distributed computing Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers. The components of a distributed system commu ...

Education and career

She earned her bachelor's degree and master's from the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a Public university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

in 1977 and 1978, respectively, and doctorate in 1982 from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, under the supervision of

Richard Karp Richard Manning Karp (born January 3, 1935) is an American computer scientist and computational theorist at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most notable for his research in the theory of algorithms, for which he received a Turin ...

; her dissertation concerned

lower bound In mathematics, particularly in order theory, an upper bound or majorant of a subset of some preordered set is an element of that is every element of . Dually, a lower bound or minorant of is defined to be an element of that is less th ...

s for

cycle detection In computer science, cycle detection or cycle finding is the algorithmic problem of finding a cycle in a sequence of iterated function values. For any function that maps a finite set to itself, and any initial value in , the sequence of ite ...

and

parallel Parallel may refer to: Mathematics * Parallel (geometry), two lines in the Euclidean plane which never intersect * Parallel (operator), mathematical operation named after the composition of electrical resistance in parallel circuits Science a ...

prefix sum In computer science, the prefix sum, cumulative sum, inclusive scan, or simply scan of a sequence of numbers is a second sequence of numbers , the summation, sums of Prefix (computer science), prefixes (running totals) of the input sequence: : : : ...

s. She joined the faculty of the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

in 1983, and moved to Toronto in 1986. From 1997 to 2001, she was the vice chair of SIGACT, the leading international society for theory of computation. From 2006 to 2009, she was chair of the steering committee for PODC, a top international conference for theory of distributed computing. In 2014, she also co-authored the book, ''Impossibility Results for Distributed Computing''. She became a

Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned or professional societies, the term refers ...

in 2014.ACM Names Fellows for Innovations in Computing
, ACM, January 8, 2015, retrieved 2015-01-08.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American computer scientists Canadian women computer scientists Canadian theoretical computer scientists Researchers in distributed computing University of California, Berkeley alumni Academic staff of the University of Toronto University of Washington faculty 2014 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery {{compu-scientist-stub