Isabel Beichl is a mathematician with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. An agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, NIST works with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements and standards. This mission is achieved through both applied and fundamental scientific research. As a member of the Information Technology Laboratory, Isabel works on applied mathematics problems as part of an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers. Made up of about 400 people, this lab's mission is to "stimulate US economic growth and industrial competitiveness through technical leadership and collaborative research in critical infrastructure technology to promote better development and use of information technology."
"Basically," says Isabel, "the mission is research and development of technologies related to a better national information infrastructure. Applied mathematics generates new computational techniques that are useful even outside of the specific problems studied. Some people are also working on software test methods and others on developing libraries of portable code. I work with about 30 people in the computing and applied mathematics division."
"In particular, I look for applications of mathematics to problems that are of practical interest," continues Isabel. "In the past few years this has been in the design of algorithms for simulation of physical systems and in Monte Carlo algorithms in general. I have also worked on implementations on 'real' machines, both sequential and parallel because the scientists that I work with need not only good ideas but running code. In practice, finding applications for existing methods has also meant development of new methods because real problems present many challenges that do not occur for the theoretician."
"In every project I have been involved in, mathematics has made a major contribution. In a recent simulation of self-avoiding random surfaces for a physics application, both probability and topology were of crucial importance for a viable solution. This, combined with the oct-tree datastructure, enabled us to solve the problem. Working on this project were two mathematicians, two physicists and two physics graduate students. The mathematicians ultimately developed the computer code."
Isabel has a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a M.A. and Ph.D. in mathematics from Cornell University. She has been with NIST for seven years. "I began collaborating with NIST scientists while I was teaching at a small liberal arts college nearby," she recalls. "I went to NIST once a week for the intellectual stimulation of mathematics research and obtained a visiting appointment for one year while on leave from the college." When she had attended graduate school in the 70's, there was very little work being done in computational methods in the mathematics department. The computing and visual hardware at NIST were a catalyst for her to do original work again. In 1990 she was able to join the staff at NIST as a permanent employee.
A broad mathematics background is most valuable for a position like Isabel has at NIST. She suggests a basic analysis and algebra sequence along with datastructures, numerical methods and probability.
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