Valeria de Paiva is a mathematician, artificial intelligence scientist and logician whose work focuses on category theory, which is the study of mathematical structure and abstraction. She recently co-founded the Topos Institute in Berkeley, CA, which aims to advance the sciences of connection and integration by looking at the mathematical frameworks of computation.

“Category theory is about connecting little pieces of mathematics and finding what they have in common. The hope of our institute is that by understanding these fundamental things more closely we’ll be able to develop new approaches to programming, including artificial intelligence and natural language processing,” de Paiva says.

At UC Santa Cruz she’s excited to help students find the cutting edge. “The beauty of UC Santa Cruz is being able to find that balance between the “head in the clouds” and “feet on the ground” approach to natural language processing.” She’s excited by the program’s proximity to Silicon Valley and the interdisciplinary research that the University is famous for.

de Paiva has held principal and senior research positions at major laboratories including the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Rearden Commerce, Nuance Communications, and most recently Samsung Research America. She’s also lectured and held academic positions at the PUC-Rio, the University of Birmingham, Stanford University and Santa Clara University. She has four degrees in mathematics, including a PhD from the University of Cambridge advised by Martin Hynton.

Outside of the classroom, de Paiva is deeply committed to expanding women’s access to computer science, logic and mathematics. She created an organization called Women In Logic and has seen firsthand how badly served by academia women can be.

For more information about the Topos Institute, please visit: https://topos.institute/