Corinna Cortes facts for kids

Corinna Cortes, born on March 31, 1961, is a brilliant computer scientist from Denmark. She is famous for her amazing work in a field called machine learning. Today, she is a Vice President at Google Research in New York City, leading important projects. Corinna has received special awards, like being an ACM Fellow and getting the Paris Kanellakis Award, for her groundbreaking ideas about how computers can learn, especially with something called "support vector machines."

Growing Up and Learning

Corinna Cortes was born in Denmark in 1961. She loved learning and went to the University of Copenhagen. In 1989, she earned her Master of Science degree in physics there. Later, she moved to the United States. She continued her studies at the University of Rochester. In 1993, she completed her PhD in computer science. Her research was guided by Professor Randal C. Nelson.

What Does a Computer Scientist Do?

Corinna Cortes started her career at AT&T Bell Labs in 1993. This was a place where many new technologies were invented. Since 2003, she has been a Vice President at Google Research in New York City. Google Research is where scientists work on new ideas for Google's products. Since 2011, she has also been a professor at the UCPH Department of Computer Science in Denmark. She helps guide the journal Machine Learning as an editor.

What is Machine Learning?

Corinna Cortes's work focuses on machine learning and data mining. Imagine teaching a computer to learn from examples, just like you learn from experience. That's machine learning! It helps computers find patterns and make predictions.

One of her most important contributions is to something called support vector machines (SVM). SVM is a very popular method in machine learning. It helps computers sort and understand information. For example, SVM can be used to help doctors with medical diagnosis. It can also help predict the weather. At AT&T, Corinna also helped design a computer language called Hancock.

Awards and Special Recognitions

Corinna Cortes has received several important awards for her work. These awards show how much her contributions have helped the field of computer science.

In 2008, she received the Paris Kanellakis Award. She shared this award with another scientist, Vladimir Vapnik. They were honored for creating the support vector machine (SVM) algorithm. This algorithm is a powerful tool that helps computers learn from data.

In 2023, Corinna was named an ACM Fellow. This is a very high honor in the world of computing. She received it for her important ideas and practical work in machine learning. It also recognized her leadership in the industry and her service to the field.

Personal Life

Outside of her amazing work in computer science, Corinna has a busy personal life. She is a mother of two children. She also enjoys staying active as a competitive runner.