Carla Pedro Gomes is a Portuguese-American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

and professor 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 ...

. She is the founding Director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability and is noted for her pioneering work in developing computational methods to address challenges in sustainability. She has conducted research in a variety of areas of artificial intelligence and computer science, including constraint reasoning,

mathematical optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criteria, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfiel ...

, and randomization techniques for exact search methods, algorithm selection,

multi-agent systems A multi-agent system (MAS or "self-organized system") is a computerized system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents.H. Pan; M. Zahmatkesh; F. Rekabi-Bana; F. Arvin; J. HuT-STAR: Time-Optimal Swarm Trajectory Planning for Quadroto ...

, and

game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...

. Her work in

computational sustainability Computational sustainability is an emerging field that attempts to balance societal, economic, and environmental resources for the future well-being of humanity using methods from mathematics, computer science, and information science fields. Sust ...

includes ecological conservation, rural resource mapping, and

pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the task of assigning a class to an observation based on patterns extracted from data. While similar, pattern recognition (PR) is not to be confused with pattern machines (PM) which may possess PR capabilities but their p ...

for

material science A material is a substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical and chemical properties, or on their geol ...

Education

Gomes received her master's degree in applied mathematics from the

Technical University of Lisbon The Technical University of Lisbon (UTL; , ) was a Portuguese public university. It was created in 1930 in Lisbon, as a confederation of preexisting schools, and comprised the faculties and institutes of veterinary medicine; agricultural scienc ...

in 1987 and her PhD in computer science from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

in 1993.

Career and research

Following her PhD, she worked at the

Air Force Research Laboratory The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is a scientific research and development detachment of the United States Air Force Air Force Materiel Command, Materiel Command dedicated to leading the discovery, development, and integration of direct- ...

for five years before joining

as a research associate in 1998. She served as the Director of the Intelligent Information Systems Institute at Cornell from 2001 to 2008, and joined the faculty in 2003 as an associate professor with joint appointments in the Departments of Computing and Information Science, Applied Economics and Management, and Computer Science. In 2008, Gomes received a $10 million grant from the

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

to create the Institute for Computational Sustainability to develop computational methods for environmental, economic, and social sustainability. She became a full professor in the Departments of Computer Science, Information Science and the Dyson School of Economics and Management in 2010. In 2011, she was a visiting fellow at the

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, is an institute of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts ...

. In 2022, she co-leads the Schmidt AI in Science initiative at Cornell with Fengqi You.

Awards and honors

Gomes was elected a Fellow of the

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international Learned society, scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public under ...

in 2007 "for significant contributions to constraint reasoning and the integration of techniques from artificial intelligence, constraint programming, and operations research". She was elected a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

in 2013. With

Bart Selman Bart Selman is a Dutch-American professor of computer science at Cornell University. He is also co-founder and principal investigator of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (CHAI) at the University of California, Berkeley, led ...

and

Henry Kautz Henry A. Kautz (born 1956) is a computer scientist and a professor of computer science at the University of Virginia. He formerly served as the Founding Director of Institute for Data Science and Professor at University of Rochester. He is intere ...

, she received the 2016

Classic Paper Award for their 1998 paper ''Boosting Combinatorial Search through Randomization'', which provided "significant contributions to the area of automated reasoning and constraint solving through the introduction of randomization and restarts into complete solvers". She was elected a

Fellow 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 society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

(ACM) in 2017.

Notable works

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gomes, Carla Living people American computer scientists Portuguese computer scientists Portuguese women computer scientists Artificial intelligence researchers Cornell University faculty Radcliffe fellows Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2017 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Air Force Research Laboratory people Sustainability advocates Technical University of Lisbon alumni Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Year of birth missing (living people)

Education

Career and research

Awards and honors

Notable works

See also

References