DSP alum and University of Chicago professor Rebecca Willett is the inaugural recipient of the 2024 SIAM Activity Group on Data Science Career Prize. Becca received the prize for her work in physics-informed machine learning and data science and for her service and leadership in the data science community. From her pioneering work on photon-limited imaging to her analysis of generalization in overparameterized neural networks, Becca's work encompasses both the mathematical and statistical foundations of data science and the structure and context of problems from the natural sciences. Her research in physics-informed machine learning has contributed to bridging the gap between theoretical research and practical applications.

Becca is a professor of statistics and computer science and the Director of AI in the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago.