Elizabeth Lee Wilmer is an American mathematician known for her work on

Markov chain mixing time In probability theory, the mixing time of a Markov chain is the time until the Markov chain is "close" to its steady state distribution. More precisely, a fundamental result about Markov chains is that a finite state irreducible aperiodic chain h ...

s. She is a professor, and former department head, of mathematics at

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1833, it is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational lib ...

. As a 16-year-old high school student at

Stuyvesant High School Stuyvesant High School ( ) is a co-ed, State school, public, college-preparatory, Specialized high schools in New York City, specialized high school in Manhattan, New York City. The school, commonly called "Stuy" ( ) by its students, faculty, a ...

and captain of the school mathematics team, Wilmer won second place in the

Westinghouse Science Talent Search Westinghouse may refer to: Businesses Current companies *Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the company that manages the Westinghouse brand, with licensees: **Westinghouse Electric Company, providing nuclear power-related services ** Westingho ...

in 1987, for a project involving 3-coloring of graphs. The first-place winner that year was also female, marking the first year that the top two prizes both went to women. As an undergraduate at

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate education, undergraduate college of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Part of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Scienc ...

, she led the university's team that won the first Mathematical Contest in Modeling 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 ...

, and she was one of the two inaugural winners of the Alice T. Schafer Prize of 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 ...

for excellence by a woman in undergraduate mathematics. She graduated from Harvard in 1991, and completed her Ph.D. at Harvard in 1999. She worked with

Persi Diaconis Persi Warren Diaconis (; born January 31, 1945) is an American mathematician of Greek descent and former professional magician. He is the Mary V. Sunseri Professor of Statistics and Mathematics at Stanford University. He is particularly known f ...

for her doctoral dissertation, ''Exact Rates of Convergence for Some Simple Non-Reversible Markov Chains'', but after Diaconis moved from Harvard to Stanford in 1997 her official

doctoral advisor A doctoral advisor (also dissertation director, dissertation advisor; or doctoral supervisor) is a member of a university faculty whose role is to guide graduate students who are candidates for a doctorate, helping them select coursework, as well ...

became Joe Harris. With David A. Levin and

Yuval Peres Yuval Peres (; born 5 October 1963) is an Israeli mathematician best known for his research in probability theory, ergodic theory, mathematical analysis, theoretical computer science, and in particular for topics such as fractals and Hausdorff m ...

, Wilmer is the author of the textbook ''

Markov Chains and Mixing Times ''Markov Chains and Mixing Times'' is a book on Markov chain mixing times. The second edition was written by David A. Levin, and Yuval Peres. Elizabeth Wilmer was a co-author on the first edition and is credited as a contributor to the second ed ...

'' (American Mathematical Society, 2009; 2nd ed., 2017). As of September 2022, Wilmer is a rotating program officer at the National Science Foundation in the Probability program.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wilmer, Elizabeth Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century American mathematicians American probability theorists Harvard College alumni Oberlin College faculty 21st-century American women mathematicians