Andrea Suzanne LaPaugh is an American computer scientist and professor emerita of computer science at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

. Her research has concerned the design and analysis of algorithms, particularly for

graph algorithm An algorithm is fundamentally a set of rules or defined procedures that is typically designed and used to solve a specific problem or a broad set of problems. Broadly, algorithms define process(es), sets of rules, or methodologies that are to be f ...

s, problems involving the

computer-aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

of VLSI circuits, and

document retrieval Document retrieval is defined as the matching of some stated user query against a set of free-text records. These records could be any type of mainly natural language, unstructured text, such as newspaper articles, real estate records or paragraphs ...

Early life and education

LaPaugh is originally from

Middletown, Connecticut Middletown is a city in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States. Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles (25.749504 km) south of Hartford, Connecticut, Hartford. Middletown is the largest city in the L ...

, where her father worked in an office and her mother was a librarian; she majored in physics at

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

. This was at a time when Cornell had no undergraduate computer science program, but she became interested in computer science through courses on

mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of Logic#Formal logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory (also known as computability theory). Research in mathematical logic com ...

and

formal language In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language is a set of strings whose symbols are taken from a set called "alphabet". The alphabet of a formal language consists of symbols that concatenate into strings (also c ...

s, with instructors including

Anil Nerode Anil Nerode (born 1932) is an American mathematician, known for his work in mathematical logic and for his many-decades tenure as a professor at Cornell University. He received his undergraduate education and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Uni ...

Juris Hartmanis Juris Hartmanis (July 5, 1928 – July 29, 2022) was a Latvian-born American computer scientist and computational theorist who, with Richard E. Stearns, received the 1993 ACM Turing Award "in recognition of their seminal paper which established ...

, and

John Hopcroft John Edward Hopcroft (born October 7, 1939) is an American theoretical computer scientist. His textbooks on theory of computation (also known as the Cinderella book) and data structures are regarded as standards in their fields. He is a professo ...

. She began her doctoral studies at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1974, working with

Ron Rivest Ronald Linn Rivest (; born May 6, 1947) is an American cryptographer and computer scientist whose work has spanned the fields of algorithms and combinatorics, cryptography, machine learning, and election integrity. He is an Institute Profess ...

on graph algorithms, and finished her Ph.D. there in 1980 with the dissertation ''Algorithms for Integrated Circuit Layout: An Analytic Approach''.

Career and later life

LaPaugh worked for a year as a visiting assistant professor at

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

before joining the Princeton University faculty as an assistant professor in 1981, at first as the only female engineering faculty member and, after earning tenure in 1987, as the only tenured woman in engineering. She was promoted to full professor in 1995, and was the

master Master, master's or masters may refer to: Ranks or titles In education: *Master (college), head of a college *Master's degree, a postgraduate or sometimes undergraduate degree in the specified discipline *Schoolmaster or master, presiding office ...

Forbes College The Malcolm S. Forbes Jr. '70 College is one of the seven residential colleges that house all freshmen and sophomores at Princeton University. One of the two first residential colleges at Princeton (along with Mathey College), it was originall ...

at Princeton from 2000 to 2004. She retired to become a

professor emerita ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

in 2019.

Selected publications

* * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lapaugh, Andrea Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American women computer scientists American theoretical computer scientists Cornell University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Princeton University faculty 21st-century American women