Nancy Marie Amato 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 ...

noted for her research on the algorithmic foundations of

motion planning Motion planning, also path planning (also known as the navigation problem or the piano mover's problem) is a computational problem to find a sequence of valid configurations that moves the object from the source to destination. The term is used ...

computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of techniques in computer science, data analysis, mathematical modeling and Computer simulation, computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer sci ...

, computational geometry and

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computing, computation in which many calculations or Process (computing), processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. ...

. Amato is the Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering and Head of the

Department of Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to applied disciplines (including the design and ...

at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

. Amato is noted for her leadership in broadening participation in computing, and is currently a member of the steering committee of CRA-WP (formerly known as CRA-W), of which she has been a member of the board since 2000.

Education

Amato received both a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree in

Economics Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...

and a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in

Mathematical Sciences The Mathematical Sciences are a group of areas of study that includes, in addition to mathematics, those academic disciplines that are primarily mathematical in nature but may not be universally considered subfields of mathematics proper. Statisti ...

from

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

in 1986. She received an MS in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988, with advisor

Manuel Blum Manuel Blum (born 26 April 1938) is a Venezuelan-born American computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1995 "In recognition of his contributions to the foundations of computational complexity theory and its application to cryptography ...

. In 1995, she received a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under advisor Franco P. Preparata for her thesis "Parallel Algorithms for Convex Hulls and Proximity Problems".

Career and research

She joined the Department of Computer Science at

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, TA&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas, United States. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of ...

as an assistant professor in 1995. She was promoted to associate professor in 2000, to professor in 2004, and to

Unocal Union Oil Company of California, and its holding company Unocal Corporation, together known as Unocal was a major petroleum explorer and marketer in the late 19th century, through the 20th century, and into the early 21st century. It was headqu ...

professor in 2011. In July 2018, Amato was named the next head of the

at the

, starting in January 2019. Amato has several notable results. Her paper on

probabilistic roadmap The probabilistic roadmap planner is a motion planning algorithm in robotics, which solves the problem of determining a path between a starting configuration of the robot and a goal configuration while avoiding collisions. The basic idea behind ...

methods (PRMs) is one of the most important papers on PRM. It describes the first PRM variant that does not use uniform sampling in the robot's configuration space. She wrote a seminal paper with one of her students that shows how the PRM methodology can be applied to protein motions, and in particular protein folding. This approach has opened up a new research area in

. This result opens up a rich new set of applications for this technique in computational biology. Another paper she wrote with her students represents a major advance by showing how global energy landscape statistics, such as relative folding rates and population kinetics, can be computed for proteins from the approximate landscapes computed by Amato's PRM-based method. In another paper, she and a student introduced a novel technique, approximate convex decomposition (ACD), for partitioning a

polyhedron In geometry, a polyhedron (: polyhedra or polyhedrons; ) is a three-dimensional figure with flat polygonal Face (geometry), faces, straight Edge (geometry), edges and sharp corners or Vertex (geometry), vertices. The term "polyhedron" may refer ...

into approximately convex pieces. Amato also co-leads the STAPL project with her husband Lawrence Rauchwerger, who is also a computer scientist on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. STAPL is a parallel C++ library.

Awards and honors

Her notable awards include: * Elected an

AAAI Fellow Fellowship of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (abbreviated as AAAI Fellow or FAAAI) is an award granted to individuals that the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), judged to have made ...

in 2018 by 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 ...

* Elected an

ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...

in 2015 by 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 ...

* In 2010, she was named an

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

(IEEE) Fellow "for contributions to the algorithmic foundations of motion planning in robotics and computational biology." *

A. Nico Habermann Award The Computing Research Association (CRA) is a 501(c)3 non-profit association of North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia enga ...

from the

Computing Research Association The Computing Research Association (CRA) is a 501(c)3 non-profit association of North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia enga ...

in 2014 * 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 ...

(AAAS) 2013 for contributions to the algorithmic foundations of motion planning, computational biology, computational geometry, and parallel computing. * Hewlett-Packard/ Harriett B. Rigas Award, 2013. * ACM Distinguished Member in 2012

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Amato, Nancy American women computer scientists American computer scientists Texas A&M University faculty Fellows of the IEEE Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2015 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Living people Scientists from Portland, Oregon Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Grainger College of Engineering alumni 21st-century American academics UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni 21st-century American women scientists