Jill Loraine Zimmerman is an American computer scientist and the James M. Beall Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at

Goucher College Goucher College ( ') is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Towson, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1885 as a Nonsectarian, nonsecterian Women's colleges in the United States, ...

. Since 2006, she has been the head of the Goucher Robotics Lab.

Early life and education

Zimmerman is from

Naperville Naperville ( ) is a city in DuPage and Will counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is a southwestern suburb of Chicago located west of the city on the DuPage River. As of the 2020 census, its population was 149,540, making it the state's ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

. While in high school in 1975, Zimmerman and her father built a computer with four kilobytes of memory after being inspired by the January cover story of ''

Popular Mechanics ''Popular Mechanics'' (often abbreviated as ''PM'' or ''PopMech'') is a magazine of popular science and technology, featuring automotive, home, outdoor, electronics, science, do it yourself, and technology topics. Military topics, aviation an ...

'' by Ed Roberts on building your own computers. Zimmerman later remarked that it was this same article that inspired

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

. In 1981, Zimmerman earned a Bachelor of Science with distinction in Computer and Informational Sciences with a minor in Mathematics from

Purdue University Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...

. At graduation, she ranked among the top ten students in the School of Science and was a member of

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...

and

Phi Kappa Phi The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi (or simply Phi Kappa Phi or ) is an honor society established in 1897 to recognize and encourage superior scholarship without restriction as to the area of study, and to promote the "unity and democracy of educa ...

. Upon enrolling in doctoral studies at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

Institute of Technology, Zimmerman was named a Corporate Associate Fellow. In 1990, she earned a doctorate in computer science, specializing in computational and recursion theory. Zimmerman completed her dissertation titled ''Classes of Grzegorczyk-Computable Real Numbers'' under her doctoral advisor Marian Pour-El.

Career

Zimmerman joined the faculty at

in 1990 as a visiting professor. She was the principal investigator for the "Computer Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Scholarship Program" where she received $220,000 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 be conducted between January 2002 – December 2005. Zimmerman's research in computer science spans

programming languages A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Programming languages are described in terms of their syntax (form) and semantics (meaning), usually defined by a formal language. Languages usually provide features ...

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

design, and robotics, with notable collaboration with Gil de Lamadrid. Beginning in the early 1990s, Zimmerman and de Lamadrid focused on robotics

pathfinding Pathfinding or pathing is the search, by a computer application, for the shortest route between two points. It is a more practical variant on Maze-solving algorithm, solving mazes. This field of research is based heavily on Dijkstra's algorith ...

, co-authoring two papers in ''Robotica'' in 1993 titled "Avoidance of Obstacles with Unknown Trajectories: Locally Optimal Paths and Path Complexity, Parts I and II." This work examined methods for navigating robots around unpredictable obstacles, contributing to early research on path complexity and optimization in robotics. Zimmerman's interests later evolved toward programming languages, especially hybrid functional-object-oriented systems. In 2000, she and de Lamadrid developed the IncH Hope compiler, a compiler for the

functional language In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing functions. It is a declarative programming paradigm in which function definitions are trees of expressions that map ...

Hope designed for the

Java Virtual Machine A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally descr ...

, which they presented at the International Workshop on the Implementation of Functional Languages in

Aachen Aachen is the List of cities in North Rhine-Westphalia by population, 13th-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia and the List of cities in Germany by population, 27th-largest city of Germany, with around 261,000 inhabitants. Aachen is locat ...

. They continued this work over several years, presenting updates at various conferences, including the International Conference on Programming Languages and Compilers in 2006 and the International Conference on Engineering and Mathematics in

Bilbao Bilbao is a city in northern Spain, the largest city in the Provinces of Spain, province of Biscay and in the Basque Country (greater region), Basque Country as a whole. It is also the largest city proper in northern Spain. Bilbao is the List o ...

in 2007. Zimmerman has run the Goucher Robotics Lab since 2006. She is the James M. Beall Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Goucher College. In 2011, Zimmerman and de Lamadrid introduced FOBS, a hybrid language combining functional and object-oriented paradigms. They presented their findings at the International Conference on Software Engineering and Real Practices, later publishing the comprehensive study "Core FOBS: A Hybrid Functional and Object-Oriented Language" in ''Computer Languages, Systems & Structures'' in 2012.

Personal life

In 1985, Zimmerman married computer science professor James Gil de Lamadrid.

Selected works

* * *

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Zimmerman, Jill 1959 births Living people Place of birth missing (living people) University of Minnesota alumni Goucher College faculty and staff Purdue University alumni American women computer scientists American computer scientists 21st-century American women scientists 20th-century American women scientists People from Naperville, Illinois American women academics