Melanie Wood

Who is Melanie Wood?

Melanie Matchett Wood is an American mathematician who became the first female American to make the U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad Team. She completed her Ph.D. in 2009 at Princeton University and is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin, after spending 2 years as Szegö Assistant Professor at Stanford University.

Wood was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Sherry Eggers and Archie Wood, both middle school teachers. Her father died of cancer when Wood was six weeks old. While a high school student at Park Tudor School in Indianapolis, Melanie became the first, and until 2004 the only female American to make the U.S. International Math Olympiad Team, receiving silver medals in the 1998 and 1999 International Mathematical Olympiad. At her school, in addition to being a math wiz, Melanie was a cheerleader and student newspaper editor.

Melanie graduated from Duke University where she won a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, Fulbright fellowship, and a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship in 2003, in addition to becoming the first American woman and second woman overall to be named a Putnam Fellow in 2002.