Dr. Nancy M. Amato, the Unocal Professor and interim head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, was named the 2014 recipient of the Computing Research Association’s (CRA) A. Nico Habermann Award.
Amato was recognized for being a highly effective leader of programs that engage women and underrepresented minorities in computing research, particularly the CRA-W Distributed Research Experience for Undergraduates program.
Amato is co-director of the Parasol Lab. She received undergraduate degrees in mathematical sciences and economics from Stanford University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of California, Berkley, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
She was an AT&T Bell Laboratories Ph.D. scholar and recipient of a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. She is an IEEE Fellow and was a distinguished lecturer for the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2006-07). She also serves as a Distinguished Speaker for the ACM Distinguished Speakers Program.
Amato’s main areas of research focus are motion planning and robotics, computational biology and geometry, and parallel and distributed computing.