News Release

NYU professor Marsha Berger elected to National Academy of Science

Grant and Award Announcement

New York University

On May 2nd, The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced that New York University professor Marsha Berger had been elected as a member. Berger was elected in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. NYU Now Has 16 Current NAS Members.

In total, NAS elected 60 new members and 15 foreign associates during the business session of its May 2nd annual meeting. All told, NAS now has 1,843 active members.

Berger is on the faculty of NYU's computer science department. In addition, she is associate director of NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. She received her Ph.D. in computer science in 1982 from Stanford University. Berger's research is in large-scale scientific computing, with applications in the area of computational fluid dynamics. One area involves the currently time-consuming task of grid generation, needed, for example, to compute the flow around a full aircraft in three dimensions. She also develops adaptive algorithms for use in these applications. Adaptive algorithms concentrate the computational effort where it is most needed (by concentrating additional grid points in these regions, for example). This technique can reduce the turnaround time for flow simulations from months to days or hours.

Berger said, "This is truly an unexpected honor. I am pleased to see the interdisciplinary work needed for large-scale scientific computing being recognized in this way. The Courant Institute is a great home for this kind of research."

NYU President L. Jay Oliva said, "Marsha Berger is a brilliant scientist. Her work is as elegant as it is innovative, and it has led to concrete improvements in aircraft design. Her intellect and commitment to inquiry are qualities that we cherish here at NYU. The bedrock of any school is its faculty, and NYU owes its great stature to the fine work of Professor Berger and the many outstanding scholars like her throughout the entire university."

Professor David McLaughlin, director of the Courant Institute, said, "Professor Marsha Berger is a leader in the new generation of computational scientists who develop methods of larger scale simulation for application throughout science, technology, engineering and society. We at the Courant Institute are very pleased that the National Academy of Science recognizes her many research accomplishments in this new and important field of computer science."

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NYU's Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences is an international center for research and advanced training in mathematics and computer science. The Institute has long been a leader in mathematical analysis, applied mathematics, and scientific computation, with special emphasis on partial differential equations and their applications. In computer science, the Institute excels in theory, programming languages, computer graphics, multimedia, and parallel computing. These specialities aside, at the Courant Institute, mathematics and computer science are viewed as living parts of the stream of science, not as isolated specialities.



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