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Honoring Dr. Talitha Washington

In honor of Women’s History Month, SIAM is spotlighting female mathematicians throughout March. Dr. Talitha Washington is the inaugural Director of the Atlanta University Center Data Science Initiative, a Professor of Mathematics at Clark Atlanta University, and an affiliate faculty at Morehouse College, Morehouse School of Medicine, and Spelman College.

Dr. Washington’s research interests include the applications of differential equations to problems in biology and engineering; the development of nonstandard finite difference schemes to numerically solve dynamical systems; and computational and data sciences. She has special interest in STEM education policy including mathematics and social justice; STEM diversity; African Americans in STEM; effective strategies for teaching and learning mathematics; and curriculum design.

Education

Dr. Washington completed her undergraduate studies in mathematics at Spelman College and studied abroad at the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, Mexico. She earned her master's and doctoral degrees in mathematics from the University of Connecticut. Dr. Washington was a VIGRE Research Associate in the Department of Mathematics at Duke University. She held assistant professorships at The College of New Rochelle and the University of Evansville, an associate professorship at Howard University, and most recently, a full professorship at Clark Atlanta University. She was elected to honor societies Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, and mathematics honor societies Kappa Mu Epsilon and Pi Mu Epsilon. [Learn more about how Dr. Washington became involved with the mathematical sciences.]

Awards & Accomplishments

Dr. Washington was the recipient of the 2019 BEYA STEM Innovator Award, was MAA's 2018 Leitzel Lecturer, is an ASI Fellow, and featured by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a Woman History Maker. In 2019, she received the distinguished Outstanding Faculty Award from Howard University, and in 2020, received the NSF Director's Award for Superior Accomplishment. In 2021, Dr. Washington became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society and the Association for Women in Mathematics, becoming the first person named a fellow of both of these organizations in the same year! 


As the inaugural Director of the Atlanta University Center Data Science Initiative, Dr. Washington leads a project which seeks to provide data-driven solutions to current and emerging societal problems, especially as it pertains to the African American community. Before this, she was Program Director at NSF in the Convergence Accelerator. Prior to that, she was a Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education, where she was instrumental in building and establishing NSF's first Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program.

Recent Happenings

Recently Dr. Washington spoke at the AUC Data Science Seminar Series about “The Black Revolution in Data Science” and was the Keynote speaker at the Inaugural HBCU Data Science Consortium Virtual Workshop. She will also be speaking at the Women in Data Science (WiDS) Conference on March 8, 2021.

Learn more about Dr. Washington’s life, publications, speaking engagements, and more.

Thank you, Dr. Washington, for your contributions to the mathematical sciences and the work you have done to encourage others to pursue careers in STEM!

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