March is Women's History Month! At SIAM, we celebrate the achievements made by women in the applied mathematics fields. This month, we hope you will take a moment to read through the spotlights of women in our community, resources and networks for women in applied mathematics, and to learn more about our commitment to diversity.
Dr. Carolyn Cho
SIAM member Dr. Carolyn Cho received her undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Physics from Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, doctoral research in Biological Physics at the University of Toronto, and postdoctoral training in Molecular Biology at Princeton University. She attended her first SIAM Annual Meeting in Toronto in 1998, when she started working in the pharmaceutical industry, and served on the organizing committee for the 2003 SIAM Annual Meeting. SIAM has been an important connection for her to keep current with the applied mathematics research community, and in recent years, she has had opportunity to provide industry insight back to the university community through volunteering in the SIAM Visiting Lecturer Program.
Dr. Cho has previously held positions of Director of Systems Biology at Pfizer and Global Head of Computational Systems Biology at Novartis, and is currently working in immuno-oncology clinical development at Merck & Co. Her first successful drug approval experience was with letermovir, a novel inhibitor of the viral pUL56 gene product for the prevention of cytomegalovirus infection in hematopoietic stem cell transplant patients. This work involved mathematical modeling of drug concentration dynamics, mechanism of drug absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion, and impact of genetic variants of metabolizing enzymes and transporters. Her current research interests include age-related immunosenescence, serving as the Merck representative on the IQ Clinical Pharmacology Leadership Group working group on New Drug Evaluation in Older Adults, as well as the mechanistic interpretation of multi-layer molecular profiling data, serving as co-chair of the International Society of Pharmacometrics working group on the integration of Quantitative Systems Pharmacology and machine learning. At the intersection of these interests, she is part of an on-going research program investigating the role of the microbiome in vaccine hyporesponse in the elderly. She has also previously helped organize immunology-related programs at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute (MBI) at Ohio State University while she served on the Board of Trustees.
Dr. Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb
SIAM member Dr. Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Department of Applied
Dr. Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb
Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP), University of Cambridge. She is head of the Cambridge Image Analysis group, Director of the Cantab Capital Institute for Mathematics of Information, Chair of the Centre for Data Driven Discovery, and Co-Director of the EPSRC Centre for Mathematics of Information in Healthcare. Since 2011, she has been a fellow of Jesus College Cambridge, and since 2016, a fellow of the Alan Turing Institute, London. She currently holds the Chair of the Committee for Applications and Interdisciplinary Relations (CAIR) of the European Mathematical Society. In 2021, she received an Established Career Fellowship from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Dr. Schönlieb has been a SIAM member since 2016, and currently serves as a member of the SIAM Council. She has been a member of the scientific or organizing committee for several SIAM conferences, including the 2018 SIAM Conference on Imaging Sciences and the 2020 and 2022 SIAM Conferences on Mathematics of Data Science. She has been an Associate Editor for SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences (SIIMS) since 2019, and a Section Editor for SIAM Review (SIREV) since 2017. Dr. Schönlieb was Chair of the SIAM Activity Group on Imaging Science from 2020-2021 and served on the SIAM Activity Group on Imaging Science Early Career Prize Selection Committee from 2018-2019.
“I strongly believe in the development of mathematics in close collaboration with application experts and the promotion of mathematics through its important applications, and I am therefore fond of the SIAM philosophy of communication with researchers in other disciplines and interdisciplinary research,” says Dr. Schönlieb.
Dr. Schönlieb graduated from the Institute for Mathematics, University of Salzburg (Austria) in 2004. From 2004 to 2005 she held a teaching position in Salzburg. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (UK) in 2009. After one year of postdoctoral activity at the University of Göttingen (Germany), she became a Lecturer at Cambridge, promoted to Reader in 2015, and promoted to Professor in 2018.
Dr. Schönlieb’s current research interests focus on variational methods, partial differential equations, and machine learning for image analysis, image processing and inverse imaging problems. She has active interdisciplinary collaborations with clinicians, biologists and physicists on biomedical imaging topics, chemical engineers and plant scientists on image sensing, as well as collaborations with artists and art conservators on digital art restoration.
“I am passionate about mathematics and its applications,” she says. “I love mathematical imaging in all its aspects and flavors as it spans a variety of mathematical topics and application areas. Having a broad research portfolio within applied mathematics, I believe I can appreciate diverse approaches to one and the same problem solved by PDEs, applied harmonic analysis, and machine learning.”
Her research has been acknowledged by many scientific prizes, including the LMS Whitehead Prize 2016, the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2017, the Inverse Problems International Association Calderon Prize 2019, and a Royal Society Wolfson fellowship in 2020, and by invitations to give plenary lectures at several renowned applied mathematics conferences, among them SIAM Conference on Imaging Science in 2014, SIAM Conference on Partial Differential Equations in 2015 , SIAM Annual Meeting in 2017 , the Applied Inverse Problems Conference in 2019, FOCM 2020, and GAMM 2021.
Dr. María González Taboada
SIAM member Dr. María González Taboada was born in Asturias, Spain. She came from a long line of educators – her father taught high school math and both her grandmothers were teachers. She has been passionate about solving math problems since she was a child and when the time came, it was a natural decision to pursue a degree in mathematics, which she earned with honors at the University of Oviedo in 1996, with a minor in Applied mathematics and Computing. Following her undergraduate studies, Dr. González Taboada pursued a Ph.D. from the University of Oviedo under the guidance of Professor Salim Meddahi.
Dr. Maria Gonzalez Taboada
Dr. González Taboada has been involved with SIAM for more than 20 years. She has attended several conferences and is a member of the SIAM Activity Group on Applied Mathematics Education, SIAM Activity Group on Computational Science and Engineering, SIAM Activity Group on Analysis of Partial Differential Equations, and SIAM Activity Group on Geosciences. She also organized a minisymposium at a recent Workshop Celebrating Diversity (which is held during the SIAM Annual Meeting) with Dr. Mario Banuelos.
Her beginning mathematical research targeted the numerical analysis of the boundary elements and finite elements coupling. The results led to the publication of her first paper with SIAM, in the SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis. Dr. González Taboada then searched out more applied mathematical projects and moved to Ciudad Real, Spain, where she joined an international project on the optimization of hydroelectric power plants at the University of Castilla-La Mancha. Following that, she did a postdoctoral stay in Professor G.N. Gatica’s group at the University of Concepción. During this time, she began work on mixed finite element methods for non-Newtonian and porous media flows, and on posterior analysis. In recent years, her research has mainly focused on the numerical analysis of mixed finite element methods applied to fluid mechanics and elasticity.
In 2003, Dr. González Taboada obtained a tenured position as Associate Professor at the University of La Coruña. Five years later, in 2008 she was awarded the Spanish Society of Applied Mathematics Prize to Young Researchers. Dr. González Taboada has continuously been involved in research projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science related to numerical analysis and simulation and has participated in several industrial projects. She is a member of the Centre for Information and Communications Technology Research (CITIC), where she is a member of the Training Committee. During her academic career, she has supervised the work of several national and international students and she is especially passionate about the mentorship of talented young students.
Dr. Carol Woodward was SIAM’s Vice President-at-Large from 2018-2021 and is a computational mathematician in the Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). She also serves as the project lead for LLNL’s Suite of Nonlinear and Differential/Algebraic Solvers (SUNDIALS). She is a SIAM Fellow (Class of 2017) and an Association for Women in Mathematics Fellow (Class of 2021).
During her term as Vice President-at-Large, Dr. Woodward supported SIAM Activity Groups in developing and maintaining their research communities and stimulated recognition of the field through the SIAM Prize and Fellows programs. She worked diligently to improve prizes, including standardizing prize specifications, advocating for diversity within the program, and educating selection committees about implicit bias. Her commitment to the prize program advanced its progress into the modern era, and her dedication ensured that selection procedures remained fair and just.
In addition to her work with prizes, Dr. Woodward worked with SIAM staff member Annie Imperatrice to initiate the process of writing policy and standardizing SIAM Sections. Her perseverance inspired a great deal of change that will continue to serve our community in a positive way long after her term.
Dr. Woodward knew from an early age that she wanted to study math and science and to attend graduate school. At Louisiana State University, where Dr. Woodward graduated with a B.S. in Mathematics, she explored various science majors, but mathematics, her first love, kept drawing her back. She then went on to receive her M.A. and Ph.D. in Computational and Applied Mathematics from Rice University.
Dr. Woodward’s research interests include numerical methods for nonlinear partial differential equations, nonlinear and linear solvers, time integration methods, verification of scientific codes, and parallel computing.
After completing her Ph.D., Dr. Woodward joined CASC as a postdoc and then became a staff researcher. Her first project at CASC was modeling variably saturated subsurface water flow in large-scale systems. For this, she developed a novel nonlinear solution approach and implemented it in ParFlow, a parallel watershed model for ground and surface water management. Her solution is now used worldwide for watershed simulation and climate analysis.
Dr. Woodward leads the development and deployment of the open source SUNDIALS suite of time integration and nonlinear solver packages designed for high performance computing systems. SUNDIALS is used worldwide in numerical simulations of numerous scientific and engineering systems in academia, labs, and industry. Dr. Woodward has applied SUNDIALS packages to applications in power grid modeling, climate simulation, and fusion systems, among other applications.
Dr. Woodward has held offices in the SIAM Activity Groups on Geosciences and Computational Science and Engineering, was as an elected member of the SIAM Council for six years, and was the SIAM representative to the Joint Committee on Women in the Mathematical Sciences for three years, two of those as Committee Chair. In 2015 Dr. Woodward was one of 15 early- and mid-career scientists and engineers recognized by LLNL for exceptional technical achievement.
Currently, Dr. Woodward serves as the International Council on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) representative on the Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science, an international committee of scientific professional unions formed to promote gender equality in sciences worldwide.
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SIAM’s Commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
As a professional society, SIAM is committed to empowering equitable, diverse, and inclusive participation in all aspects of our community. SIAM will provide a climate that encourages the open expression and exchange of ideas, that is free from all forms of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation, and that is welcoming and comfortable to all members and to those who participate in its activities.
In pursuit of this commitment, SIAM is dedicated to the philosophy of equality of opportunity and treatment for all participants regardless of gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion or religious belief, age, marital status, disabilities, veteran status, and field of expertise.