Good morning: It is my pleasure to introduce our speaker today, Margaret Wright - a dynamic, renowned researcher, with a passion for mathematics and leadership. Margaret will receive an honorary doctorate (D.Math) from the University of Waterloo at our spring convocation tomorrow and is to address the math graduates. Margaret received her PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1976, and remained there in its famed Department of Operations Research until 1988. During this time she was at the forefront in the development of practical numerical algorithms for Optimization. The group in Stanford Gill-Murray-Wright (and later joined by Saunders) became arguably the most famous group in Optimization - this Gill-Murray-Wright-Saunders became affectionately known as 'the gang of four'. I was told the following anecdote about a memorable introduction at the ISMP in Bonn 1982: Phil Gill was standing with Margaret in a large group when Mike Powell introduced him to a Professor Ge from China. After shaking hands with Gill, Prof. Ge then turned to Margaret held out his hand and said: "so you must be the famous Walter Murray". Subsequently Margaret spent 14 years with Bell Laboratories, rising to Head of the Scientific Computing Research Department in 1997. These were very exciting and controversial times as Optimization went through the 'interior-point' revolution, which followed Karmarkar's interior-point algorithm. Again Margaret pointed the way when she (with her Stanford colleagues) showed the connection between Karmarkar's work and log-barrier methods, a technique she had concentrated on in her Ph.D. dissertation. (Perhaps we will hear some of the 'dark secrets/gossip/politics' from this time.) Margaret has a long list of distinguished service and awards and is currently Chair of the Computer Science Department at New York University. As you will soon see, Margaret delivers high energy and high content talks. Please join me in warmly welcoming Professor Margaret Wright. ---------------------------------------------- Margaret has also been active in service to the mathematical community. She served as President of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 1995-6, and serves or has served on numerous senior federal government advisory committees and editorial boards. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997, and was chosen Emmy Noether Lecturer by the Association of Women in Mathematics in 2000. She was selected as the Forsythe Lecturer by the Stanford Computer Science Department in 2000 as well. In 2001 she received the American Mathematical Society Award for Distinguished Public Service.