Dr. Brenda Dietrich is Director, Mathematical Sciences, of the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY.

Brenda leads a team that does basic and applied research in the mathematical sciences and related areas. The department has three overall objectives:

• to conduct research on a broad range of theoretical and applied topics;
• to work with IBM and its customers to find new ways that mathematical sciences can help solve their problems;
• to work with other parts of IBM to effectively deliver these solutions.
  

Previously, she was the senior manager of the Optimization Center at IBM Research, where she managed both the optimization research and the application of optimization to supply chain and transportation. She also founded the Logistics Applications group and was the IBM Research liaison for travel and transportation projects. In 1995 she served on the Research Technical Planning Staff, coordinating the development of a ten year technology outlook and portions of the division strategy. From 1990 to 1994 she lead the development of a set of resource allocation and planning tools for IBM manufacturing lines, and managed the Manufacturing Logistics group, and the Manufacturing Planning and Scheduling group at IBM Research. Her research includes work in manufacturing modeling and scheduling, inventory management, transportation logistics, mathematical programming, and combinatorial optimization. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences (IE/MS) at Northwestern University, a member of the Industrial Advisory Board for both IMA (University of Minnesota) and DIMACS (Rutgers), a member of the IBM Academy of Technology, and has served on the Board of INFORMS. She is the holder of eight patents, is author or co-author of numerous publications, and co-editor of the book Mathematics of the Internet, E-Auction and Markets.

Dr. Dietrich joined IBM Research in 1984. She received a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University.