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Ruth Haas, Ph.D.
Professor of Mathematics and Engineering
Ruth Haas is a mathematician whose main area of research is combinatorics, a relatively new area of study. Combinatorics examines discrete mathematical structures, and includes some easily stated problems that have difficult solutions. For example, the traveling salesperson problem asks for the most efficient order for the sales representative to visit a long list of cities. This is a problem that has application to chip design as well as salespeople. Professor Haas’ research is both algebraic and combinatorial, and spans theoretical and applied topics.
 In addition to serving on the engineering faculty, Haas chairs Smith’s department of mathematics and statistics. She also co-directs the Center for Women in Mathematics, which offers intensive training in mathematics at the advanced undergraduate level.
Haas, who has taught at Smith since 1989, holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University in operations research and industrial engineering. Also known as systems engineering, operations research involves complex issues stated as mathematical problems whose solutions require tools such as discrete optimization, graph theory, queuing theory, probabilistic analysis, and linear programming. Operations research has varied applications, from scheduling airplane flights to organizing bus routes, plotting political campaign strategies, planning on-demand distribution systems for goods and services, and optimizing a company’s product mix. Boston’s Big Dig, for example, required operations research to schedule the orderly flow of hundreds of interconnected jobs requiring tons of equipment and materials. As an engineering professor she teaches students to use math to look at problems from multiple points of view and to include in their thought process the social, political, and economic implications of their solutions. |
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