Anna Catherine Gilbert (born 1972) is an American mathematician who works as the John C. Malone Professor of Statistics & Data Science, Applied Mathematics, and Electrical Engineering at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

. She was previously a professor at the University of Michigan. Her research expertise is in

randomized algorithm A randomized algorithm is an algorithm that employs a degree of randomness as part of its logic or procedure. The algorithm typically uses uniformly random bits as an auxiliary input to guide its behavior, in the hope of achieving good performan ...

s for

harmonic analysis Harmonic analysis is a branch of mathematics concerned with investigating the connections between a function and its representation in frequency. The frequency representation is found by using the Fourier transform for functions on unbounded do ...

image processing An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be displayed through other media, including a pr ...

signal processing Signal processing is an electrical engineering subfield that focuses on analyzing, modifying and synthesizing ''signals'', such as audio signal processing, sound, image processing, images, Scalar potential, potential fields, Seismic tomograph ...

, and large data sets..

Education and career

Gilbert earned a bachelor's degree from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

in 1993, and completed her Ph.D. in 1997 from

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 ...

under the supervision of

Ingrid Daubechies Baroness Ingrid Daubechies ( ; ; born 17 August 1954) is a Belgian-American physicist and mathematician. She is best known for her work with wavelets in image compression. Daubechies is recognized for her study of the mathematical methods that ...

. After postdoctoral research at

, she joined

AT&T Labs AT&T Labs, Inc. (formerly AT&T Laboratories, Inc.) is the research & development division of AT&T, the telecommunications company. It employs some 1,800 people in various locations, including: Bedminster, New Jersey; Middletown Township, New J ...

, and continued there as a staff member until 2004, when she moved to Michigan.

Research

Gilbert's research discoveries have included the existence of

multifractal A multifractal system is a generalization of a fractal system in which a single exponent (the fractal dimension) is not enough to describe its dynamics; instead, a continuous spectrum of exponents (the so-called singularity spectrum) is needed. ...

behavior in TCP-based internet traffic, the development of

streaming algorithm In computer science, streaming algorithms are algorithms for processing data streams in which the input is presented as a sequence of items and can be examined in only a few passes, typically one-pass algorithm, just one. These algorithms are desi ...

s based on random projections for aggregating information from large data streams using very small amounts of working memory, and a foundational analysis of the ability of orthogonal

matching pursuit Matching pursuit (MP) is a sparse approximation algorithm which finds the "best matching" projections of multidimensional data onto the span of an over-complete (i.e., redundant) dictionary D. The basic idea is to approximately represent a sign ...

to recover sparse signals with her student Joel Tropp.

Recognition

She became a

Sloan Fellow The Sloan Fellows program is a middle and senior-career master's degree program in general management and leadership offered at MIT, Stanford University, and London Business School (LBS). Initially supported by a grant from Alfred P. Sloan, fo ...

in 2006. In 2008, she was awarded the NAS Award for Initiatives in Research and the

Association for Computing Machinery Douglas Engelbart Award Association may refer to: *Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal *Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry *Voluntary associatio ...

. She also won the Signal Processing Best Paper award along side Martin Strauss and Joel Tropp in 2010 from the European Association for Signal Processing. In 2013 she won the Ralph E. Kleinman Prize of the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific soci ...

"for her creative and deep contributions to the mathematics of signal processing, data analysis and communications". She was an

invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians An invitation system is a method of encouraging people to join an organization, such as a Club (organization), club or a website. In regular society, it refers to any system whereby new members are chosen; they cannot simply apply. In relation to w ...

in 2014, speaking on "Mathematics in Science and Technology". She gave the von Neumann Lecture at the 2022

Joint Mathematics Meeting The Joint Mathematics Meetings (JMM) is a mathematics conference hosted annually in early January by the American Mathematical Society (AMS). Frequently, several other national mathematics organizations also participate. From 1998 to 2020, the JMM ...

, titled "Metric representations: Algorithms and Geometry."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gilbert, Anna Catharine 1972 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American computer scientists American women computer scientists University of Chicago alumni Princeton University alumni University of Michigan faculty 20th-century American women mathematicians 21st-century American women mathematicians