Irena Lasiecka

Lasiecka earned her Ph.D. in 1975 from the University of Warsaw under the supervision of Andrzej Wierzbicki. In 2014, she became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to control theory of partial differential equations, mentorship, and service to professional societies."

After receiving her PhD, Lasiecka started to transfer her knowledge of Applied Mathematics to others in addition to more personal studying and research. Her first teaching job was at the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1975, and she later ventured to the United States a few years later, teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has been teaching in the US ever since. The following is a chart listing the institutions in which Lasiecka has been a teaching faculty member of.

Irena Lasiecka was born and raised in Poland, where she received her initial background in mathematics. She studied math for many years at the University of Warsaw, where she earned her Master of Science degree in applied mathematics in 1972. A few years later, she received her PhD from the same university in the same field of study.

Irena Lasiecka (born February 4, 1948) is a Polish-American mathematician, a Distinguished University Professor of mathematics and chair of the mathematics department at the University of Memphis. She is also co-editor-in-chief of two academic journals, Applied Mathematics & Optimization and Evolution Equations & Control Theory.

Example of Optimization: A homeowner has 1600 feet of fencing and wants to fence off a rectangular yard that borders the house. There is no fence bordering the house. What are the dimensions of the house that has the largest area?

It is much easier to solve this equation if it is in terms of one variable, so we can get rid of y by expressing it in terms of x. Therefore, y=-2x+1600. This we can now plug into A=xy.