Law enforcement agencies across the country have discovered that partnering with a team of mathematicians and social scientists from UCLA can help them determine where crime is likely to occur. Dr. Bertozzi will talk about the fascinating story behind her participation on the UCLA team that developed a “predictive policing” computer program that zeros-in on areas that have the highest probability of crime.

In addition, the use of mathematics in studying gang crimes and other criminal activities will also be discussed. Commercial use of the "predictive-policing" program allows communities to put police officers in the right place at the right time, stopping crime before it happens.

Image for "Public Lecture: Mathematics of Crime"
Dr. Bertozzi with members of Brown and Providence Police.

About the Speaker

Andrea Bertozzi is an applied mathematician with expertise in nonlinear partial differential equations and fluid dynamics. She also works in the areas of geometric methods for image processing, crime modeling and analysis, and swarming/cooperative dynamics. Dr. Bertozzi completed all her degrees in Mathematics at Princeton. She was an L. E. Dickson Instructor and NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago from 1991-1995. She was the Maria Geoppert-Mayer Distinguished Scholar at Argonne National Laboratory from 1995-6.

She was on the faculty at Duke University from 1995-2004 first as Associate Professor of Mathematics and then as Professor of Mathematics and Physics. She has served as the Director of the Center for Nonlinear and Complex Systems while at Duke. Bertozzi moved to UCLA in 2003 as a Professor of Mathematics. Since 2005 she has served as Director of Applied Mathematics, overseeing the graduate and undergraduate research training programs at UCLA. In 2012 she was appointed the Betsy Wood Knapp Chair for Innovation and Creativity.

Andrea Bertozzi, University of California at Los Angeles

Lecture Video