User:Sams4math/sandbox willcox

Karen Willcox is an applied mathematician best known for her work on reduced-order modeling and the study of multi-fidelity methods. She is currently the director of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences and professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin, Texas. In 2018, she was nominated as a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) for her "contributions to model reduction and multifidelity methods, with applications in optimization, control, design, and uncertainty quantification of large-scale systems."

Personal life and education
Willcox was born and raised in New Zealand where she earned a bachelor's degree in Engineering Science from the University of Auckland in the year 1994. She subsequently moved to Boston, Massachusetts to join the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for graduate studies. At MIT, she received a master's degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1996 and a PhD in the same subject in the year 2000. Her thesis, titled 'Reduced-Order Aerodynamic Models for Aeroelastic Control of Turbomachines', was completed under the supervision of Jaime Peraire and James Paduano. While at MIT, Willcox played for the MIT Women's Rugby team. She is also an avid marathon-runner and an experienced mountain climber.

Willcox had long wanted to be an astronaut. She made the shortlist of candidates for NASA's astronaut training program in 2009 and 2013, but both attempts remained unsuccessful.

Career
Following her doctoral studies, Willcox worked at Boeing Phantom Works in the Blended-Wing-Body aircraft design group for a year. In 2001, she joined the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT as a professor. In 2008, She additionally became a founding co-director of the MIT Center for Computational Engineering. She stayed at MIT until July 2018. During this period, she also had short-term visiting appointments at Sandia National Laboratories, the University of Auckland and Singapore University of Technology and Design. In August 2018, Willcox joined the University of Texas at Austin to take over from J. Tinsley Oden as the director of the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences.

Willcox has served on the editorial board of several journals; she is currently a Section editor for the SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing and an Associate editor for the AIAA Journal.

Willcox was received several awards and distinctions during the course of her career. She was nominated as a SIAM fellow in 2018. In 2017, she became a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her "services to aerospace engineering and education". In addition to research, Willcox has been involved in science education and policy as well. An advocate for innovation in teaching, she served as co-chair of the Online Education Policy Initiative at MIT. In 2015, she received a First in the World grant from the US Department of Education.