In honor of Women’s History Month, SIAM is spotlighting female mathematicians throughout March. SIAM member, fellow, and associate editor Dr. Sigal Gottlieb is Deputy Director at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM), and a Professor of Mathematics and Co-Director of the Center for Scientific Computing and Visualization Research (CSCVR) at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Education and Background
Dr. Gottlieb received her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University in 1998, where she also received her undergraduate and master’s degrees. While at Brown, SIAM’s 2021 SIAM John von Neumann Lecturer, Dr. Chi-Wang Shu, was her academic advisor.
Research Focus
Dr. Gottlieb’s research interests lie primarily in the development of numerical algorithms for the simulation of hyperbolic PDEs, in particular, strong stability preserving (SSP) time discretizations. She has developed high order Runge—Kutta, multi-step, general linear methods, and multiderivative methods that preserve strong stability of the spatial discretization coupled with forward Euler. She is also interested in spatial discretization techniques such as spectral and pseudospectral methods and WENO methods and has recently been developing reduced basis methods in a collocation context. Her works have been cited nearly 7,000 times.
The US Air Force Office of Scientific Research has been continuously funding Dr. Gottlieb’s research since 2006. She was also frequently funded by the National Science Foundation, both for her research and for support of undergraduate research and curricular development in computational mathematics. Recently, she was part of a team that was awarded $650,000 for “Implementation of a Contextualized Computing Pedagogy in STEM Core Courses and Its Impact on Undergraduate Student Academic Success, Retention, and Graduation” The grant aims to provide multi-faceted and near-peer mentoring, social support, and a contextualized computing-centered education framework for eligible STEM students to prepare them to compete successfully in graduate school and careers in high-demand fields.
Recent Happenings
Currently, Dr. Gottlieb is Chancellor Professor of Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Also at UMass Dartmouth, she is the founding Director and now Co-Director of the Center for Scientific Computing and Visualization Research (CSCVR).
She has been serving as Deputy Director of the National Science Foundation funded Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics (ICERM) since 2017.
In 2019 Dr. Gottlieb was named a SIAM Fellow "for her contribution to strong-stability-preserving time discretizations and other schemes for hyperbolic equations, and for her professional services including those to SIAM and women in mathematics." Two years later, she was named a Fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in the Class of 2021 "for exemplary and lasting work in forging an active and positive research environment, proactive outreach, effective mentoring, and promoting the success of women in mathematical and computational sciences."
Dr. Gottlieb is currently an Associate Editor for SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis; Journal on Results in Applied Mathematics; and Journal on Communications on Applied Mathematics and Computation. She has also served as an editorial board member of Applied Numerical Mathematics and Journal of Scientific Computing.
Thank you, Dr. Gottlieb, for your leadership in the mathematical sciences and your contributions to SIAM!