Anna T. Lawniczak (born 1953)[1] is an applied mathematician known for her work on complex systems including lattice gas automata, a type of cellular automaton used to model fluid dynamics. Educated in Poland and the US, she has worked in the US and Canada, where she is a professor at the University of Guelph.[2] She is the former president of the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society.[3]
After earning a master's degree in engineering (summa cum laude) from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology in Poland, Lawniczak went to Southern Illinois University in the US for doctoral study in mathematics.[4] She completed her Ph.D. in 1981, supervised by Philip J. Feinsilver.[5]
Before taking her current position at the University of Guelph in 1989,[2] Lawniczak was a professor at Louisiana State University in the US, and the University of Toronto in Canada.[4]
She was president of the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society / Société Canadienne de Mathématiques Appliquées et Industrielles (CAIMS/SCMAI) from 1997 to 2001. As president she guided a 1998 transition that included a new constitution, formal incorporation, a new annual conference, and a change from its former name, the Canadian Applied Mathematics Society / Société Canadienne de Mathématiques Appliquées.[3]
The Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society gave Lawniczak their Arthur Beaumont Distinguished Service Award in 2003.[3] In the same year, the Fields Institute listed her as a Fellow in recognition of her "outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute and its activities".[6]
The Engineering Institute of Canada named her as an EIC Fellow in 2018, after a nomination from IEEE Canada, naming her as "an international authority in the discrete modeling & simulation methods like Individually Based Simulation Models, Agent Based Simulations, Cellular Automata and Lattice Gas Cellular Automata, a field of which she is one of the co-developers".[7]