Carla Cotwright-Williams
Carla Denise Cotwright-Williams | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Alma mater | California State University, Long Beach Southern University University of Mississippi |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mathematician |
| Institutions | Department of Defense American University |
| Thesis | Clones and minors in matroids (2006) |
| Doctoral advisor | T. James Reid |
Carla Denise Cotwright-Williams (born November 6) is an American mathematician who works as a Technical Director and Data Scientist for the United States Department of Defense.[1] She was the second African-American woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Mississippi.
Early life and educational
[edit]She is the daughter of a police officer and grew up in South Central Los Angeles. Moving to a better neighborhood in Los Angeles as a teenager. She went to Westchester High School[1] and attended summer enrichment programs for underrepresented students there that included courses at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a field trip to see the Space Shuttle at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base.[1][2] She graduated in 1991.
As an undergraduate at California State University, Long Beach, Cotwright-Williams started in engineering. Then, as a math major, she struggled initially and earned low enough grades to be academically disqualified from the university, but worked hard to return as a student in good standing, eventually earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 2000. She then earned a master's degree in mathematics from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2002.[1][3] Initially intending to follow a science & math Ph.D. track, she was persuaded to shift to pure mathematics under the mentorship of an African-American professor, Stella R. Ashford,[1][2] who became the supervisor for her master's thesis in number theory, Unique Factorization in Bi-Quadratic Number Fields.
She went on to doctoral studies at the University of Mississippi, where she became president of the Graduate Student Council[4] and earned a second master's degree there along the way in 2004.[1][3] She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Mississippi in 2006. Her dissertation was supervised by T. James Reid and concerned matroid theory.[5] She was the second African-American woman to earn a doctorate in mathematics at the university,[4] and was part of a group of four African-Americans who all graduated in the same year.[6][7]
Career
[edit]After completing her doctorate, Cotwright-Williams worked as a tenure-track faculty member in mathematics at Wake Forest University, Hampton University, and Norfolk State University.[1][8] While working there, in an effort to shift her career to a government track, she began studying public policy and working on collaborative research on Bayesian network based drone control systems with NASA, and on a US Navy project involving measurement uncertainty.[1][4] In 2010, she completed a Graduate Certificate in Public Policy Analysis at Old Dominion University.[3] She applied for an American Mathematical Society Congressional Fellowship, and was turned down on her first application but succeeded in her second, in 2012.[1][4][8]
Cotwright-Williams also became a 2012–2013 Legislative Branch Fellow, under the American Association for the Advancement of Science Science and Technology Policy Fellowship program.[9] She also worked as a science and technology Fellow for both the Senate and the House of Representatives. While a Congressional Fellow she worked as a staffer on the majority staff of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and her responsibilities included responding to the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.[1][4][10] In 2014 she worked on data quality for United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and in 2015 she became Hardy-Apfel IT Fellow at the Social Security Administration.[4] Her work at the Social Security Administration has included business analytics to prevent fraud and support data warehousing.[3] In 2018, with the fellowship expiring, she moved again to the United States Department of Defense as a data scientist.[1][11]
Cotwright-Williams continues to hold an adjunct professorial lecturer position in mathematics and statistics at American University.[12] She serves as an at-large member of the executive committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM).[13]
Her career advice includes the following quote: "Get out and talk to people and learn new things!"[14]
Awards and honors
[edit]- Outside of Academia Member in the National Association of Mathematicians[10][15]
- Black History Month 2017 Honoree, Mathematically Gifted & Black[16]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Williams, Talithia (2018), "Carla Cotwright-Williams", Power in Numbers: The Rebel Women of Mathematics, Race Point Publishing, pp. 166–171, ISBN 9780760360286
- ^ a b "Carla Cotwright", Black History Month 2017 Honoree, Mathematically Gifted & Black, retrieved 2018-11-24
- ^ a b c d "Carla Cotwright-Williams, Computer Scientist and IT Fellow", SIAM Careers Brochure: Profiles of Professional Mathematicians and Computational Scientists, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, retrieved 2018-11-24
- ^ a b c d e f "Doctoral Alumna Uses Math for Public Good", Graduate School Newsletter, University of Mississippi, Summer 2017, retrieved 2018-11-24
- ^ Carla Cotwright-Williams at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Farmer, Vernon L.; Shepherd-Wynn, Evelyn; Brevard, Lisa Pertillar (2012), "In His Hands", in Farmer, Vernon L.; Shepherd-Wynn, Evelyn (eds.), Voices of Historical and Contemporary Black American Pioneers, Volume 1: Medicine and Science, ABC-CLIO, pp. 3–44, ISBN 9780313392245. See especially p. 40.
- ^ Banerji, Shilpa (May 12, 2006), "In Historic First, Four African-Americans Earn Math Ph.D.s at Ole Miss", Diverse Issues in Higher Education
- ^ a b Carla D. Cotwright-Williams Chosen as AMS Congressional Fellow, The EDGE Foundation: (Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education), May 11, 2012, retrieved 2018-11-24
- ^ "2019 VSP 20x20: Data Sharing & AI - Carla D Cotwright-Williams". Youtube. 2 October 2019. Retrieved February 28, 2021.
- ^ a b "Carla Cotwright-Williams". prime.natsci.msu.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
- ^ "Boost Your Career in Washington" (PDF), Inside the AMS: Announcements from the AMS Office of Government Relations, Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 65 (9): 1128–1129, October 2018
- ^ "Carla Cotwright-Williams", College of Arts & Sciences Faculty, American University, retrieved 2018-11-24
- ^ "AWM Executive Committee".
- ^ "Carla Cotwright-Williams | Computer Scientist and IT Fellow". Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Archived from the original on 2018-11-25. Retrieved February 28, 2021.
- ^ "Board of Directors". www.nam-math.org. Archived from the original on 2021-02-14. Retrieved 2020-06-10.
- ^ "Carla Cotwright". Mathematically Gifted & Black. Archived from the original on 2018-02-07.
- 1973 births
- Living people
- 21st-century American mathematicians
- African-American mathematicians
- African-American women mathematicians
- Combinatorialists
- California State University, Long Beach alumni
- Southern University alumni
- University of Mississippi alumni
- Wake Forest University faculty
- Hampton University faculty
- Norfolk State University faculty
- American University faculty
- 21st-century American women mathematicians
- 21st-century American women academics
- 21st-century American academics
- 21st-century African-American women
- 21st-century African-American scientists
- 20th-century African-American people
- 20th-century African-American women