Cecilia Rodriguez Aragon is the director of the Human-Centered Data Science Lab at the University of Washington (UW). She won the Distinguished Alumni Award in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 2013, and the student-nominated Faculty Innovator in Teaching Award from her department at UW that same year. Aragon’s research focuses on enabling humans to gain insight from vast data sets.
She has been principal investigator (PI) or co-PI for over $27 million n grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Washington Research Foundation, the UW Center for Commercialization, Microsoft, and Intel.
Along with Raimund Seidel, they co-invented a binary search tree in which each node has both a key and a priority, and the randomized search tree, to achieve good average-case performance.
Aragon’s work includes:
The architect for Sunfall, a visual analytics system for supernova astrophysics, she also developed an augmented-reality visualization system for helicopter pilots that increased their ability to land safely during simulated hazardous conditions.
Prior to her appointment at UW, she was a computer scientist and data scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for six years and NASA Ames Research Center for nine years, and before that, an airshow and test pilot, entrepreneur, and member of the United States Aerobatic Team. She is also a champion aerobatic pilot.
Aragon received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 1982, her master’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 and, her Ph.D. in computer science from the same institution in 2004.
Four years later, Aragon won the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. The early career award is the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.
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