Maria Klawe

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Maria Klawe bigraphy, stories - Presidents

Maria Klawe : biography

1951 –

Maria M. Klawe (pronounced ) is a computer scientist and the fifth president of Harvey Mudd College (since July 1, 2006). Although born in Toronto in 1951, she became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2009. She was previously Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University.

Research

Some of Klawe’s best-cited research works concern algorithms for solving geometric optimization problems,. distributed leader election,. and the art gallery problem,. and studies of the effects of gender on electronic game-playing… She founded the Aphasia Project, a collaboration between UBC and Princeton to study aphasia and develop cognitive aids for people suffering from it, after her friend Anita Borg developed brain cancer. web site.. Klawe’s Erdős number is 1.

Biography

Klawe was born in Toronto in 1951. She lived in Scotland from ages 4 to 12, and then returned to Canada, living with her family in Edmonton, Alberta.. Klawe studied at the University of Alberta, dropped out to travel the world, and returned to earn her B.Sc. in 1973. She stayed at Alberta for her graduate studies, and in 1977 she earned her Ph.D. there in mathematics. She started a second Ph.D., in computer science, at the University of Toronto, but was offered a faculty position there before completing the degree. She spent eight years in the industry, serving at IBM Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, California, first as a research scientist, then as manager of the Discrete Mathematics Group and manager of the Mathematics and Related Computer Science Department. She and her husband Nick Pippenger then moved to the University of British Columbia, where she stayed for 15 years and served as head of the Department of Computer Science from 1988 to 1995, vice president of student and academic services from 1995 to 1998, and dean of science from 1998 to 2002. From UBC she moved to Princeton and then Harvey Mudd College. Previously a Canadian national, Klawe was among 5,996 persons who became citizens of the United States at a ceremony held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009. Later in 2009, she joined the board of directors of the Microsoft Corporation.

In addition to her career as a scientist and academic, Klawe is well known for her water color painting. Klawe is an active volunteer and advocate for encouraging more women to enter STEM fields.

Awards and honors

In 1996 Klawe was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. In 2006, Klawe was inducted as a founding Fellow of the Canadian Information Processing Society. In 2012 she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society., retrieved 2013-01-27.

She was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science in a ceremony at the University of Alberta on June 12, 2007. The University of Ottawa also conferred an honorary doctorate to her in a convocation on June 8, 2008.