In honor of Women’s History Month, SIAM is spotlighting female mathematicians throughout March. Dr. Susanne C. Brenner is the 40th President of SIAM and Louisiana State University (LSU) System Boyd Professor. She holds a joint appointment with the LSU Department of Mathematics and the Center for Computation and Technology (CCT). At CCT she is also serving as Associate Director for Academic Affairs.
Education and Awards
Dr. Brenner received her Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Michigan. Her academic advisors were Professors Ridgway Scott and Jeffrey Rauch. She held academic positions at Syracuse University, Clarkson University, and the University of South Carolina before moving to LSU in 2006. She has also held visiting positions in China, France, Germany, India, and the UK.
In 2005, Dr. Brenner was awarded a Humboldt-Forschungspreis (Humboldt Research Award) from the German Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 2011, she was awarded the AWM-SIAM Sonia Kovalevsky Lecture Prize. She is a SIAM Fellow, Class of 2010; AMS Fellow, Inaugural Class 2013; 2012 AAAS Fellow; and 2020 AWM Fellow.
Research Focus
The research of Dr. Brenner is concerned with the design and analysis of numerical methods for partial differential equations, especially finite element methods and fast solution techniques. She is a co-author of the monograph The Mathematical Theory of Finite Element Methods (Springer-Verlag, now in its third edition).
Dr. Brenner is known for her work in nonstandard finite element methods such as classical nonconforming methods and discontinuous Galerkin methods, and their multigrid and domain decomposition solvers. Recently it was realized that her earlier work on fourth order elliptic problems in mechanics is also relevant for elliptic optimal control problems with pointwise state constraints, which is now one of her focused research areas. Her other recent research ventures include generalized finite element methods, virtual element methods, and multiscale finite element methods. The research of Dr. Brenner has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation since she was a postdoc.
Recent Happenings
Dr. Brenner is serving as President of SIAM from 2021–2022 and will serve as Past President in 2023.
Dr. Brenner was recently appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics, Berlin, Germany. This is in addition to her service on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics, Universität Bonn, Germany, and the National Science Foundation Mathematical and Physical Sciences Advisory Committee.
Currently Dr. Brenner serves as Managing Editor of Mathematics of Computation. She is also on the editorial boards of the SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis; Numerische Mathematik; Electronic Transactions on Numerical Analysis; Numerical Algorithms; Journal of Numerical Mathematics; Computational Methods in Applied Mathematics; and Results in Applied Mathematics. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the SIAM Classics in Applied Mathematics book series.
Dr. Brenner also serves as co-ringmaster of the Finite Element Circus, a regular conference devoted to the theory and applications of the finite element method and related areas of numerical analysis and partial differential equations.
Thank you, Dr. Brenner, for your leadership at SIAM and beyond! Learn more.