Lydia E. Kavraki Λύδια Καβράκη | |
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| Occupation(s) | Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science - Rice University, Greek-American computer scientist |
Lydia E. Kavraki (Greek:Λύδια Καβράκη) is aGreek-Americancomputer scientist, the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science, a professor of bioengineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering atRice University. She is also the director of the Ken Kennedy Institute atRice University. She is known for her work onrobotics/AI andbioinformatics/computational biology and in particular for theprobabilistic roadmap method for robot motion planning and biomolecular configuration analysis.[1]
Kavraki was born inHeraklion[2] and did her undergraduate studies at theUniversity of Crete.[1] She then moved toStanford University for her graduate studies, earning a Ph.D. in 1995 under the supervision ofJean-Claude Latombe.[1][3]
In 2000, Kavraki won theGrace Murray Hopper Award for her work on probabilistic roadmaps.[4][5] In 2002,Popular Science magazine listed her in their "Brilliant 10" awards,[6] and in the same yearMIT Technology Review listed her in their annual list of 35 innovators under the age of 35.[7] In 2010, she was elected as a Fellow of theAssociation for Computing Machinery "for contributions to robotic motion planning and its application to computational biology."[8][9] She is also a fellow of theAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence,[1][10] a fellow ofIEEE,[11] a fellow of AIMBE[12] and a fellow of theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science.[13] In 2015, she was the winner of the ABIE Award for Technical Leadership from theAnita Borg Institute.[14] In 2017, Kavraki was honored with the ACM Athena Lecturer award from theAssociation for Computing Machinery, which celebrates women researchers who have made fundamental contributions to the field of Computer Science.[15] In 2020, she was awarded the ACM IEEE Allen Newell Award.[16] In 2025, she was has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.[17][18]
Kavraki is a member of theNational Academy of Medicine (formerly Institute of Medicine (IoM)),[19] theAcademy of Athens,[20] theAcademy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST), theAcademia Europaea,[21] theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences,[22] and theNational Academy of Sciences.[23]
