Kate Smith-Miles


Kate Amanda Smith-Miles is an Australian applied mathematician, known for her research on neural networks and combinatorial optimization. She is a professor of applied mathematics at the University of Melbourne, and the president of the Australian Mathematical Society.

Education and career

Smith-Miles earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics at the University of Melbourne. There, she did honours research on chaos theory under the mentorship of Colin J. Thompson, and initially planned to continue in graduate study in mathematics, but instead earned her Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Melbourne, working with Marimuthu Palaniswami and with Mohan Krishnamoorthy at CSIRO.
She worked as a professor of information technology in the School of Business Systems at Monash University from 1996 to 2006, as a professor of information technology and head of the school of engineering at Deakin University from 2006 to 2009, and as a professor of applied mathematics at Monash University from 2009 to 2017 and head of the school of mathematical sciences at Monash from 2009 to 2014. In 2017 she took her present position at Melbourne.

Recognition

Smith-Miles is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers Australia, and of the Australian Mathematical Society. She is the 2010 winner of the Australian Mathematical Society Medal and the 2017 winner of the E. O. Tuck Medal of ANZIAM.
In 2014 the Australian Research Council awarded the Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship to her.