Talitha Washington


Talitha Washington is an American mathematician and academic at Howard University, who specializes in applied mathematics and STEM education policy. She was recognized by Mathematically Gifted & Black as a Black History Month 2018 Honoree.

Education and career

Washington was born in Frankfort, Indiana, and adopted at a young age. She was raised in Evansville, Indiana, and attended Benjamin Bosse High School. After serving in Costa Rica with the American Field Service, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Spelman College in 1996. She then attended the University of Connecticut, earning a master's degree in 1998 and a Ph.D in 2001. Her doctoral thesis was Mathematical Model of Proteins Acting as On/Off Switches, under the supervision of Tung Choi.
Washington served on the faculty of Duke University from 2001 to 2003, the College of New Rochelle from 2003 to 2005, the University of Evansville from 2005 to 2011, and Howard University, since 2011, where she is associate professor of mathematics. She is currently on leave as a program director at the National Science Foundation.
Washington's research interests include nonstandard finite difference schemes for certain systems of differential equations, including population models, one-dimensional systems, and the Black–Scholes equation.
Starting in August 2020, she is the new director of the Atlanta University Center Consortium Data Science Initiative.

Education policy and awards

Washington is active in education policy, especially best practices on achieving racial and ethnic diversity in STEM. At the NSF, she has served as co-Lead of the Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program and is a graduate of the STEM diversity organization SACNAS. She serves on the Council of the American Mathematical Society and served on the Executive Committee of the Association for Women in Mathematics.
Washington helped to champion the once-forgotten Evansville mathematician Elbert Frank Cox, from her hometown of Evansville, leading to the November 2006 unveiling of a plaque honoring the longtime Howard professor as the first African-American scholar to earn a doctorate in mathematics. She received the 2019 Black Engineer of the Year Awards STEM Innovator Award.

Selected publications

; Applied mathematics
;STEM education policy