Jennifer Tour Chayes is Associate Provost of the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society and Dean of the School of Information at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. 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. Chayes is best known for her work on

phase transitions In chemistry, thermodynamics, and other related fields, a phase transition (or phase change) is the physical process of transition between one state of a medium and another. Commonly the term is used to refer to changes among the basic states of ...

in discrete mathematics and computer science, structural and dynamical properties of self-engineered networks, and algorithmic game theory. She is considered one of the world's experts in the modeling and analysis of dynamically growing graphs.2012 Women to Watch: Jennifer Chayes
Massachusetts High Tech. By Scott Pickering. 20 April 2012. Retrieved 6 May 2012. Chayes joined Microsoft Research in 1997, when she co-founded the Theory Group. She received her Ph.D. in mathematical physics at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1983. She is Affiliate Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

, and was a professor of mathematics at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...

from 1987 to 2001. She is an author on almost 120 scientific papers and the inventor on more than 25 patents.

Early life and education

Chayes was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

and grew up in White Plains, New York, the child of Iranian immigrants. She received her B.A. in

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

and

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

from

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the col ...

in 1979 where she graduated first in her class. She received her Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics at Princeton University. She did her postdoctoral work in the Mathematics and Physics departments at Harvard and

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach a ...

Career

She became a tenured mathematics professor at UCLA in 1987. While she was on sabbatical at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...

in 1997,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

CTO

Nathan Myhrvold Nathan Paul Myhrvold (born August 3, 1959), formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, is co-founder of Intellectual Ventures and the principal author of '' Modernist Cuisine'' and its successor books. Myhrvold was listed as co-inventor ...

, a classmate of Chayes's from Princeton, asked her to start and lead the Theory Group at

Microsoft Research Redmond Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

. The Theory Group analyzes fundamental questions in theoretical computer science using techniques from statistical physics and discrete mathematics. Chayes opened Microsoft Research New England in July 2008 with Borgs. The lab is located at the Microsoft New England Research & Development Center and is pursuing new, interdisciplinary areas of research that bring together core computer scientists and social scientists to understand, model, and enable future computing and online experiences. On May 3, 2012, the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' reported, "Microsoft is opening a research lab in New York City…" which Chayes will co-manage. The new lab also brings together computer scientists and social scientists, particularly in the areas of economics, computational and behavioral social sciences, and machine learning. Prior to joining Berkeley, Chayes was Managing Director of both Microsoft Research New England and Microsoft Research New York City. She has contributed to the development of methods to analyze the structure and behavior of various networks, the design of auction algorithms, and the design and analysis of various business models for the online world. She also served on the Mathematical Sciences jury for the

Infosys Prize The Infosys Prize is an annual award given to scientists, researchers, engineers and social scientists of Indian origin (not necessarily born in India) by the Infosys Science Foundation and ranks among the highest monetary awards in India to r ...

from 2016 to 2018.

Affiliations

Chayes serves on numerous institute boards, advisory committees and editorial boards, including the

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in comput ...

Selection Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Board of Trustees of the

Mathematical Sciences Research Institute The Simons Laufer Mathematical Sciences Institute (SLMath), formerly the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), is an independent nonprofit mathematical research institution on the University of California campus in Berkeley, Califo ...

and the

Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics The Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM), founded in 2011, is an American research institute in mathematics at Brown University, funded beginning in 2010 by a grant from the National Science Foundation. A ...

, the Advisory Boards of the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Computer Science, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Farm Research Campus, and Women Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology. Chayes is a past Chair of the Mathematics Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a past Vice-President of the American Mathematical Society. She is the recipient of a

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

Postdoctoral Fellowship, a

Sloan Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

, and the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award. Chayes is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the

Fields Institute The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, commonly known simply as the Fields Institute, is an international centre for scientific research in mathematical sciences. It is an independent non-profit with strong ties to 20 Ontar ...

, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

, as well as a National Associate of the National Academies. The

Association for Women in Mathematics The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) is a professional society whose mission is to encourage women and girls to study and to have active careers in the mathematical sciences, and to promote equal opportunity for and the equal treatment o ...

has included her in the 2020 class of AWM Fellows for "pioneering the way for women in the mathematical sciences to have leading technical roles in the high-tech industry; for extraordinary leadership and mentoring on behalf of women in the mathematical sciences". She has been the recipient of many leadership awards, including one of the 2012 Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Awards. In 2019 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Chayes is featured in the Notable Women in Computing cards.

Awards and honors

* Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship (1989) * Member of

, Princeton, NJ (1994–95, 1997) * Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians (1998) * American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow (2006) * Association for Computing Machinery Fellow (2010) *

Fellow (2012) * Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award (2012) * Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

John von Neumann Lecture Prize The John von Neumann Prize (until 2019 named John von Neumann Lecture Prize) was established in 1959 with funds from IBM and other industry corporations, and is awarded for "outstanding and distinguished contributions to the field of applied ma ...

(2015) * Leiden University honorary doctorate (2016)University of Leiden news
retrieved 2017-06-26 * National Academy of Sciences member (2019)

Personal life

Chayes married Christian Borgs in 1993 and was previously married to Lincoln Chayes whom she met at Wesleyan.

References

External links

Jennifer Tour Chayes homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chayes, Jennifer Tour 21st-century American physicists American computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists American women computer scientists American women mathematicians American women physicists 1956 births Living people Fellows of the American Mathematical Society Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Cornell University alumni Harvard University alumni Microsoft employees Microsoft Research people Microsoft technical fellows Princeton University alumni University of California, Los Angeles faculty University of Washington faculty Wesleyan University alumni Scientists from New York (state) 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American women scientists Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the Association for Women in Mathematics Game theorists Sloan Research Fellows American people of Iranian descent 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences