Publish Date: 11/13/2009

Computer Science alumnus Brian Sutton was awarded the 14th Leslie Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis this summer. Dr. Sutton competed against five finalists from Britain, France, Belgium, China and the United States. Each finalist gave a 40-minute lecture during the prize ceremony, which was held June 29, 2009, at the Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. Dr. Sutton’s winning paper, “Computing the Complete CS Decomposition,” presents an algorithm that computes the cosine-sine decomposition of a partitioned unitary matrix.

The Leslie Fox Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in applied mathematics. It is awarded every other year to promising mathematicians under the age of 31. The submissions are judged by a committee of respected peers based on originality and quality of the subject. Special consideration is also given to the suitability of the material for a 40-minute lecture to an audience of numerical analysts.

Dr. Sutton earned bachelor's degrees in both mathematics and computer science at Virginia Tech in 2001 and his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently a faculty member of the Mathematics Department at Randolph Macon College.