Vanessa Robins facts for kids

Vanessa Robins is an Australian mathematician. She uses math to study interesting things. Her work includes looking at shapes with computers, how images are made, and how tiny pieces of materials, like sand, are put together. She is a researcher at the Australian National University.

Her School Journey

Vanessa Robins studied math at the Australian National University. She earned her first degree there in 1994. Later, she went to the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States. She completed her PhD, which is a very high university degree, in 2000. Her big research project was about using computers to understand shapes and how they change.

What She Discovered

Vanessa Robins helped create a very important math idea. It's called "persistent homology." This idea helps scientists find hidden shapes and patterns in large amounts of data. It's like finding the main structure in a huge pile of information. She was one of three people who came up with this idea around the same time in 1999.

Besides her math research, Vanessa Robins also works with artists. She has teamed up with artist Julie Brooke. They work together to create visual pictures of math shapes. This helps people see and understand complex math ideas.