Doreen Thomas
South African and Australian engineer and mathematician
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doreen Anne Thomas is an Australian mathematician and electrical and mechanical engineer.[1] She is an emeritus professor of Mechanical Engineering at Melbourne University[2] and director of the start-up company MineOptima.[3]
Doreen Anne Thomas | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Professor of Mechanical Engineering |
| Employer | University of Melbourne |
Career
Thomas earned her BSc from the University of Cape Town, and another from the University of Witwatersrand. At Oxford she earned an MSc and a D.Phil[3] in 1976, with a mathematical dissertation entitled Problems in Functional Analysis supervised by Hilary Priestley.[4] Her mathematical in network analysis work led to her contributions in electrical and mechanical engineering.
As professor in the many engineering schools, in mathematics and statistics[5] and as associate dean of research and research training[5] at Melbourne she has done much to encourage women to be engineers.[5][6] The engineering faculty of Melbourne University honours her work by offering postdoctoral scholarships in her name.[7][6][5] In 2006 she as appointed as the University of Melbourne's first female professor of Engineering.[1] She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and a Fellow of Engineers Australia.[8] She also has over 150 publications in international peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings.[3]
She commercialised her mining software optimising mine design via her start-up company MineOptima which was acquired by the mining software company RPM.[9] This software, which reduces development time and haulage costs in underground tunnel design, has been licensed to some of the world's largest mining companies.[1]
Awards
- In 2011 Thomas was awarded with a Citation for an Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.[3]
- In 2012 she was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.[10]
- In 2019 she was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women.[11]
- In 2021 she was recognised for her significant service to tertiary engineering education and research, and to women, in this that years Queen's Birthday Honours (see: 2021 Queen's Birthday Honours (Australia)).[5]
Selected publications
- M. Brazil; C.J. Ras; D.A. Thomas (2016). "An exact algorithm for the bottleneck 2-connected k -Steiner network problem in L p planes". Discrete Applied Mathematics. 201: 47–69. doi:10.1016/j.dam.2015.07.029. Zbl 1329.05268. Wikidata Q61714566.
- Julian de Hoog; Tansu Alpcan; Marcus Brazil; Doreen Anne Thomas; Iven Mareels (2015). "Optimal Charging of Electric Vehicles Taking Distribution Network Constraints Into Account" (PDF). IEEE Transactions on Power Systems. 30 (1): 365–375. doi:10.1109/tpwrs.2014.2318293. Wikidata Q61714578.
- P. A. GROSSMAN; M. BRAZIL; J. H. RUBINSTEIN; D. A. THOMAS (2013). "MINIMAL CURVATURE-CONSTRAINED PATHS IN THE PLANE WITH A CONSTRAINT ON ARCS WITH OPPOSITE ORIENTATIONS". International Journal of Computational Geometry and Applications. 23 (03): 171–196. doi:10.1142/s0218195913500064. Zbl 1330.65086. Wikidata Q61714606.
- Robert R Kerr; Anthony N. Burkitt; Doreen Thomas; Matthieu Gilson; David B Grayden (2013). "Delay selection by spike-timing-dependent plasticity in recurrent networks of spiking neurons receiving oscillatory inputs". PLOS Computational Biology. 9 (2) e1002897. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002897. PMC 3567188. PMID 23408878. Wikidata Q34585649.
- M. Brazil; D.A. Thomas (2006). "Network optimization for the design of underground mines". Networks. 49 (1): 40–50. doi:10.1002/net.20140. Zbl 1131.90410. Wikidata Q61714626.