Katya Scheinberg facts for kids

Katya Scheinberg is a Russian-American mathematician. She uses math to solve real-world problems. Her work helps find the best ways to do things, especially in areas like continuous optimization. This means finding the best solution when you have many choices.

She is known for her research in derivative-free optimization. This is a special way to find the best solution without needing very complex math calculations. Today, she is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She teaches in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

About Her Life and Work

Katya Scheinberg was born in Moscow, which is the capital city of Russia. She studied at Moscow State University. In 1992, she earned her first degrees in computational mathematics and cybernetics. This means she learned how to use computers to solve math problems. She also studied how different systems work.

Later, she moved to the United States. She continued her studies at Columbia University. In 1997, she earned her Ph.D. Her advanced degree was in operations research. This field uses math to help people make better decisions. Her main teacher for her Ph.D. was Donald Goldfarb.

After finishing her studies, Dr. Scheinberg worked at IBM Research. This was at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. She worked there from 1997 to 2009. She also taught at New York University. In 2010, she joined the faculty at Lehigh University. She became a special professor there in 2014.

In 2019, she moved to Cornell University. She was a professor in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering. Then, in July 2024, she joined the team at Georgia Tech.

Dr. Scheinberg also helps share new math ideas. She has been the main editor for a series of books on optimization since 2014. She also edited a newsletter called Optima from 2011 to 2013.

Her Research Work

Dr. Scheinberg's research connects two important areas: optimization and machine learning. Machine learning is when computers learn from data. She works on how to make these learning systems better. For example, she studies kernel support vector machines. These are tools used in machine learning to sort and understand data.

She also wrote a book with Andrew R. Conn and Luís Nunes Vicente. The book is called Introduction to Derivative Free Optimization. It was published in 2008. This book helps explain how to find the best solutions without using complex math calculations.

Awards and Honors

Dr. Scheinberg has received several important awards for her work.

• In 2015, she won the Lagrange Prize in Continuous Optimization. She shared this award with Andrew R. Conn and Luís Nunes Vicente. They won it for their book, Introduction to Derivative Free Optimization. The award recognized how their work has helped in many fields. These include aerospace engineering and city transport systems. It also helped with cleaning up groundwater.
• In 2019, she received the Farkas Prize. This award is given by the Optimization Society. It recognizes outstanding work in optimization.
• In 2022, she was named a Fellow of INFORMS. INFORMS is a big group for people who work in operations research. This honor recognized her amazing research. It also honored her leadership and service in the field.