Amanda Randles is an American computer scientist who is the Alfred Winborne and Victoria Stover Mordecai Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences at

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

. Randles is an associate professor of biomedical engineering with secondary appointments in computer science, mathematics, and mechanical engineering and materials science. She is a member of the

Duke Cancer Institute The Duke Cancer Institute (DCI) is a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, research facility, and hospital. Founded in 1971, the center is part of the Duke University School of Medicine and Duke University Health Sys ...

. Her research interests include biomedical simulation, machine learning, computational fluid dynamics, and

high-performance computing High-performance computing (HPC) is the use of supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Overview HPC integrates systems administration (including network and security knowledge) and parallel programming into ...

Early career and education

In high school, Randles attended the Utica Center for Math, Science, and Technology, where she learned computer programming and its applications in the sciences. She also participated in

Science Olympiad Science Olympiad, sometimes abbreviated as SciOly, is an American team competition in which students compete in 23 events pertaining to various fields of science. The subjects include earth science, biology, chemistry, physics, and engineering. O ...

and

FIRST Robotics FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition operated by For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, ''FIRST''®. Each year, teams of high school students, coaches, and mentors work to build ...

. Randles attended

, where she completed a B.A. in physics and computer science in 2005. After working for three years as a software developer on the

IBM Blue Gene Blue Gene was an IBM project aimed at designing supercomputers that can reach operating speeds in the petaFLOPS (PFLOPS) range, with relatively low power consumption. The project created three generations of supercomputers, Blue Gene/L, Blue ...

project, she went to

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

to earn an S.M. in computer science (2010) and a PhD in

applied physics Applied physics is the application of physics to solve scientific or engineering problems. It is usually considered a bridge or a connection between physics and engineering. "Applied" is distinguished from "pure" by a subtle combination of fac ...

(2013) advised by Efthimios Kaxiras and

Hanspeter Pfister Hanspeter Pfister is a Swiss computer scientist. He is the An Wang Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Brain Science at Harvar ...

. She was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) and in 2011, she was awarded a

Computational Science Graduate Fellowship The Computational Science Graduate Fellowship (CSGF) program is a highly selective graduate fellowship program sponsored by the United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of th ...

by the

Krell Institute The Krell Institute is a 501(3)(c) corporation located in Ames, Iowa near Iowa State University. The organization was founded in 1997 in support of the US Department of Energy's Computational Science Graduate Fellowship program (CSGF), and has sin ...

. She subsequently completed a

practicum Work Practicum is the American term for a work placement and is an undergraduate or graduate-level course, often in a specialized field of study, that is designed to give students supervised practical application of a previously or concurrently stu ...

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Livermore, California, United States. Originally established in 1952, the laboratory now i ...

and was a visiting scientist at Franziska Michor's laboratory in the

Dana–Farber Cancer Institute Dana–Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) is a comprehensive cancer treatment and research center in Boston, Massachusetts. Dana-Farber is the founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Harvard's Comprehensive Cancer Center designated ...

Academic career

Randles joined the Duke University Biomedical Engineering Department in 2015, where she is currently serving as the Alfred Winborne and Victoria Stover Mordecai Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences. She received tenure in 2023 in Biomedical Engineering and has secondary appointments in mathematics, computer science, and mechanical and materials science. She is also a member of the

Research

Randles' research interests are biomedical simulation and

; specifically, her focus is developing computational tools that can examine the behavior of different diseases, from

atherosclerosis Atherosclerosis is a pattern of the disease arteriosclerosis, characterized by development of abnormalities called lesions in walls of arteries. This is a chronic inflammatory disease involving many different cell types and is driven by eleva ...

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

. Randles and her research group have developed fluid dynamics simulation software capable of modeling blood flowing throughout a human body based on full-body CT and

MRI Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to generate pictures of the anatomy and the physiological processes inside the body. MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields, magnetic field gradients, and rad ...

scans, dubbed HARVEY after the physician

William Harvey William Harvey (1 April 1578 – 3 June 1657) was an English physician who made influential contributions to anatomy and physiology. He was the first known physician to describe completely, and in detail, pulmonary and systemic circulation ...

. Possible applications include examining how different medical interventions in

cardiovascular disease Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is any disease involving the heart or blood vessels. CVDs constitute a class of diseases that includes: coronary artery diseases (e.g. angina, heart attack), heart failure, hypertensive heart disease, rheumati ...

impact the

circulatory system In vertebrates, the circulatory system is a system of organs that includes the heart, blood vessels, and blood which is circulated throughout the body. It includes the cardiovascular system, or vascular system, that consists of the heart ...

and modeling the flow of singular cancer cells through the system. In 2018, Randles was one of ten researchers selected to test simulation-based projects on the

Aurora An aurora ( aurorae or auroras), also commonly known as the northern lights (aurora borealis) or southern lights (aurora australis), is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly observed in high-latitude regions (around the Arc ...

exascale supercomputer in 2021, as part of the Aurora Early Science Program at the

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Lemont, Illinois, Lemont, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1946, the laboratory is owned by the United Sta ...

. She was awarded an

NSF CAREER Award The National Science Foundation CAREER award is the most prestigious award presented by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States Federal Government to support junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through rese ...

in May 2020 to support her work on HARVEY.

Awards and honors

In 2023, she was warded th
NIH Pioneer award
to support her work combining wearables with physics-based models. She is a Fellow of th
National Academy of Inventors
For her work on ventilator splitting during the Covid-19 pandemic, she was awarded th
Alexandra Jane Noble Epiphany Science Inspiration Award
In 2014, Randles was awarded the NIH Director's Early Independence Award. She was named to the 2015

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental organization, international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German ...

Young Scientist List for her work on the "design of large-scale parallel applications targeting problems in physics". In 2017, she was awarded the

Grace Murray Hopper Award The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or serv ...

and was later named to the ''

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

Innovators Under 35 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by '' MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at '' Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.co ...

, both given for her work on HARVEY. In January 2024, she was named a Distinguished Member of the ACM. She was the 2023 recipient of the ACM Prize in Computing for her contributions to "computational health through innovative algorithms, tools, and high performance computing methods for diagnosing and treating a variety of human diseases".

Selected publications

* * * * *

References

External links

Amanda Randles
at Duke University
Randles Lab
at the

Pratt School of Engineering The Duke University Pratt School of Engineering is the engineering school of Duke University, a private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. The school was created by the Board of Trustees at Duke University as the Coll ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Randles, Amanda Living people American computer scientists Duke University alumni Harvard University alumni Duke University faculty 21st-century American engineers 21st-century American women engineers Grace Murray Hopper Award laureates Year of birth missing (living people) American women academics Distinguished Members of the ACM