Mila Nikolova (1962 – 20 June 2018) was a Bulgarian applied mathematician, known for her research in

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 ...

inverse problem An inverse problem in science is the process of calculating from a set of observations the causal factors that produced them: for example, calculating an image in X-ray computed tomography, sound source reconstruction, source reconstruction in ac ...

s, and

compressed sensing Compressed sensing (also known as compressive sensing, compressive sampling, or sparse sampling) is a signal processing technique for efficiently acquiring and reconstructing a Signal (electronics), signal by finding solutions to Underdetermined s ...

Education and career

After working as a science journalist and engineer in Bulgaria, Nikolova completed a Ph.D. in 1995 in signal and image processing at the

University of Paris-Sud Paris-Sud University (), also known as the University of Paris — XI (or as the Orsay Faculty of Sciences, University of Paris before 1971), was a French research university distributed among several campuses in the southern suburbs of Paris, ...

. In 2006, she earned a

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excelle ...

in mathematics at

Pierre and Marie Curie University Pierre and Marie Curie University ( , UPMC), also known as Paris VI, was a public research university in Paris, France, from 1971 to 2017. The university was located on the Jussieu Campus in the Latin Quarter of the 5th arrondissement of Paris, ...

. She did postdoctoral research with

Électricité de France Électricité de France SA (; ), commonly known as EDF, is a French multinational corporation, multinational electric utility company owned by the government of France. Headquartered in Paris, with €139.7 billion in sales in 2023, EDF ope ...

, and then joined the faculty at

Paris Descartes University Paris Descartes University (), also known as Paris V, was a French public university located in Paris. It was one of the inheritors of the historic University of Paris, which was split into 13 universities in 1970. Paris Descartes completely merg ...

in 1996. In 1999 she was given a position as senior research fellow at

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

, associated at first with the

École nationale supérieure des télécommunications École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * Éco ...

and since 2003 with the École normale supérieure Cachan. She became a director of research at CNRS in 2009.

Recognition

Nikolova won the of the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

in 2010, "for the originality and depth of her research in mathematical image processing and in solving certain inverse problems". The ''Journal of Mathematical Imaging and Vision'' has published a posthumous special issue in honor of Nikolova.

References

External links

*
Home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nikolova, Mila 1962 births 2018 deaths 20th-century Bulgarian mathematicians 21st-century Bulgarian mathematicians 20th-century French mathematicians 21st-century French mathematicians Bulgarian women mathematicians 20th-century French women mathematicians Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research 21st-century French women mathematicians