• Professor Emeritus, Computer Science & Engineering
Nancy M. Amato

Educational Background

  • Ph.D. Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1995
  • M.S. Computer Science, University of California at Berkeley, 1988
  • B.S. Mathematical Sciences, Stanford University, 1986
  • A.B. Economics, Stanford University, 1986

Research Interests

    • Motion planning
    • Computational biology
    • Robotics
    • Computational geometry
    • Animation
    • Parallel and distributed computing
    • Parallel algorithms
    • Performance modeling and optimization

Awards & Honors

  • Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching, Texas A&M University, 2011
  • E.D. Brockett Professorship Award, 2009-2010
  • TEES Senior Fellow Award, College of Engineering, Texas A&M University, 2009-2010
  • Fellow, Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2010
  • ACM Distinguished Speaker, 2008 - present
  • Woman's Progress Award, Texas A&M University, 2008
  • Distinguished Lecturer, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, 2006-2007
  • Halliburton Professorship Award, College of Engineering, 2006
  • Fellow, World Technology Network, 2005
  • TEES Fellow Award, College of Engineering, Texas A&M University, 2001, 2004
  • Unocal Endowed Professorship in Engineering, Texas A&M University, 2001-2004
  • NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, 1996-2000
  • Lockheed Martin Engineering Teaching Award, College of Engineering, Texas A&M, 1999
  • Diversity Award, Provost's Office, and Women's Week Faculty Award, Texas A&M, 1998
  • TEES Select Young Faculty Award, College of Engineering, Texas A&M, 1997
  • Montague Center for Teaching Excellence Scholar, Texas A&M, 1997
  • ACM Award for Teaching Excellence (voted by students), CS Dept, Spring 1997
  • AT&T Bell Laboratories Ph.D. Scholar, 1993-1994

Selected Publications

  • Gabriel Tanase, Antal Buss, Adam Fidel, Harshvardhan, Ioannis Papadopoulos, Olga Pearce, Timmie G. Smith, Nathan L. Thomas, Xiabing Xu, Nedal Mourad, Jeremy Vu, Mauro Bianco, Nancy M. Amato and Lawrence Rauchwerger, "The STAPL Parallel Container Framework," in Proc. of ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP), San Antonio, TX, pp. 235-246, 2011.
  • Samuel Rodriguez, Nancy M. Amato, "Behavior-Based Evacuation Planning," Proc. of the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), pp. 350-355, Anchorage, Alaska, May 2010.
  • Xinyu Tang, Shawna Thomas, Philip Coleman, Nancy M. Amato, "Reachable Distance Space: Efficient Sampling-Based Planning for Spatially Constrained Systems," International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), special issue of selected papers from WAFR 2008, 29(7), June 2010, pp. 916-934. DOI: 10.1177/0278364909357643
  • Xinyu Tang, Shawna Thomas, Lydia Tapia, David P. Giedroc, Nancy M. Amato, "Simulating RNA Folding Kinetics on Approximated Energy Landscapes," Journal of Molecular Biology, 3811(4):1055-1067, Sep 2008.
  • Jyh-Ming Lien and Nancy M. Amato, "Approximate Convex Decomposition of Polyhedra and Its Applications," Computer Aided Geometric Design (CAGD), 25(7), October 2008, pp. 503-522. Preliminary version appeared in Proc. of the ACM Solid and Physical Modeling Symposium (SPM), pp. 121-131. (Back Cover Image), June 2007.