Lydia Kavraki

Lydia E. Kavraki Λύδια Καβράκη
Occupation(s)	Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science - Rice University, Greek-American computer scientist

Lydia E. Kavraki (Greek: Λύδια Καβράκη) is a Greek-American computer scientist, the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science, a professor of bioengineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering at Rice University. She is also the director of the Ken Kennedy Institute at Rice University. She is known for her work on robotics/AI and bioinformatics/computational biology and in particular for the probabilistic roadmap method for robot motion planning and biomolecular configuration analysis.^[1]

Biography

Kavraki was born in Heraklion^[2] and did her undergraduate studies at the University of Crete.^[1] She then moved to Stanford University for her graduate studies, earning a Ph.D. in 1995 under the supervision of Jean-Claude Latombe.^[1][3]

Awards and honors

In 2000, Kavraki won the Grace Murray Hopper Award for her work on probabilistic roadmaps.^[4][5] In 2002, Popular Science magazine listed her in their "Brilliant 10" awards,^[6] and in the same year MIT Technology Review listed her in their annual list of 35 innovators under the age of 35. ^[7] In 2010, she was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery "for contributions to robotic motion planning and its application to computational biology."^[8][9] She is also a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence,^[1][10] a fellow of IEEE,^[11] a fellow of AIMBE ^[12] and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.^[13] In 2015, she was the winner of the ABIE Award for Technical Leadership from the Anita Borg Institute.^[14] In 2017, Kavraki was honored with the ACM Athena Lecturer award from the Association for Computing Machinery, which celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to the field of Computer Science.^[15] In 2020, she was awarded the ACM IEEE Allen Newell Award.^[16]

Kavraki is a member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly Institute of Medicine (IoM)),^[17] the Academy of Athens,^[18] the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST), the Academia Europaea,^[19] and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[20]

References

1. Short Biographical Sketch of Lydia E. Kavraki, Rice University, retrieved 2019-11-1.
2. Oral History Interview with Selma Šabanović, College Station, Texas 2015
3. Lydia E. Kavraki at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.
4. Award citation for Grace Murray Hopper Award Archived 2012-04-02 at the Wayback Machine, ACM, retrieved 2011-11-20.
5. "Kavraki awarded ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award" (PDF), OwlBytes: 1, 8, Fall 2001
6. Minkel, J. R. (October 14, 2002), "PopSci's Brilliant 10", Popular Science.
7. "TR35: Technology Review's annual list of 35 innovators under 35", Technology Review, 2002.
8. ACM Names 41 Fellows from World's Leading Institutions Archived 2012-04-28 at the Wayback Machine, ACM, December 7, 2010, retrieved 2011-11-20.
9. Kavraki elected ACM Fellow, Rice University, December 13, 2010, retrieved 2011-11-20. Archived 2011-10-07 at the Wayback Machine
10. Current AAAI Fellows, AAAI, retrieved 2011-11-20.
11. "Kavraki elected IEEE fellow". news.rice.edu.
12. "Lydia E. Kavraki, Ph.D. COF-0490 - AIMBE". aimbe.org.
13. "AAAS Members Elected as Fellows", Science, 338 (6111): 1168–1171, November 30, 2012, doi:10.1126/science.338.6111.1166.
14. "Lydia E. Kavraki - Technical Leadership ABIE Award". AnitaB.org. 2015-09-01. Archived from the original on 2017-08-07.
15. "Lydia E. Kavraki named 2017-2018 ACM Athena Lecturer". www.acm.org.
16. "Lydia Kavraki ACM IEEE Allen Newell Award". www.acm.org.
17. "IOM Elects 70 New Members, 10 Foreign Associates : Health and Medicine Division". nationalacademies.org.
18. "Kavraki inducted to the Academy of Athens | Rice Engineering | Rice University". engineering.rice.edu.
19. "Kavraki, Lydia". Member profiles. Academia Europaea. Retrieved 2020-10-08.
20. "New members". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 2023. Retrieved 2023-04-21.