Catherine Cole McGeoch is an 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 ...

specializing in empirical algorithmics and heuristics for

NP-hard In computational complexity theory, a computational problem ''H'' is called NP-hard if, for every problem ''L'' which can be solved in non-deterministic polynomial-time, there is a polynomial-time reduction from ''L'' to ''H''. That is, assumi ...

problems. She is currently Beitzel Professor in Technology and Society at

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zepha ...

. She has been the Editor in Chief of ''ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics'' and was a member of the ACM Publications Board.

Biography

McGeoch graduated summa cum laude from

Butler University Butler University is a private university in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1855 and named after founder Ovid Butler, the university has over 60 major academic fields of study within six colleges in the arts, business, communic ...

in 1981. She then earned her M.S. (1983) and her Ph.D.(1986) from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

, supervised by Jon Bentley. She is the author of ''A Guide to Experimental Algorithmics'' () and ''Adiabatic Quantum Computation and Quantum Annealing: Theory and Practice'' (). In 2013, she published one of the first detailed benchmarks of D-Wave's Quantum Computer versus conventional software. Her work was featured in an Amherst College press release and was subsequently cited in numerous media outlets, including ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', ''

The Economist ''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...

'' and ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

''. Starting in May 2014 she took a leave of absence from Amherst College to work full-time for D-Wave.

References

Butler University alumni Carnegie Mellon University alumni 21st-century American women writers American computer scientists American women computer scientists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) {{compu-scientist-stub