Marsha Berger. Marsha J. Berger (born 1953) is an American computer scientist. Her areas of research include numerical analysis, computational fluid dynamics, and high-performance parallel computing. She is a Silver Professor (emeritus) of Computer Science and Mathematics in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. She is Group Leader of Modeling and Simulation in the Center for Computational Mathematics at the Flatiron Institute.

Berger was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2005 for developing adaptive mesh refinement algorithms and software that have advanced engineering applications, especially the analysis of aircraft and spacecraft.

Education
Berger received her B.S. in mathematics from State University of New York at Binghamton-Harpur College in 1974. She went on to receive an M.S. and a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University in 1978 and 1982, respectively.

Career and research
Berger's research includes high-performance parallel computing, numerical analysis, and computational fluid dynamics. Specifically she develops software and engineering applications for the spacecraft and aircraft industries. Berger worked at Argonne National Laboratory as a scientific programmer after graduating from SUNY. Her specific duties included developing models for the Energy and Environmental Systems Division. During her time at Stanford, she became associated with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. After graduating with her Ph.D., she began working at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, first as a postdoc, then as a faculty member. Berger has served as the deputy director of the Courant Institute and still serves as an educator at NYU. She has been a visiting scientist at RIACS/NASA Ames Research Center from 1991 to present.

Berger has pioneered the technique of adaptive mesh refinement which is used in the numerical solution of systems of partial differential equations (PDEs). Her work includes high-performance software and algorithmic innovations and has inspired significant work worldwide. Berger is also known for contributions to Cartesian mesh finite difference methods for numerical PDE's.

Awards and recognition

 National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award, 1988
 National Science Foundation Faculty Award for Women, 1991
 Elected to the National Academy of Sciences, 2000. 
 NASA Software of the Year Award for Cart3D, 2002
 IEEE Sidney Fernbach Award, 2004
 Elected to the National Academy of Engineering, 2005.
 Fellow of Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, 2009 
 Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2011
 Norbert Wiener Prize in Applied Mathematics, 2018

See also
 Adaptive mesh refinement

References

1953 births
Living people
American women computer scientists
American computer scientists
Harpur College alumni
New York University faculty
Stanford University alumni
Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty
Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
21st-century American women scientists
20th-century American women scientists
Silver professors
20th-century American women mathematicians
21st-century American women mathematicians