Nelly Vladimirovna Litvak (Russian: Нелли Владимировна Литвак, born January 27, 1972)[1] is a Russian and Dutch applied mathematician whose research includes the study of complex networks, stochastic processes, and their applications in medical logistics. Formerly a professor at the University of Twente, she moved to the Eindhoven University of Technology in 2023.[2]
Nelly Litvak was born in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), Russia[1] to Nina Zvereva and Vladimir Antonets.[3][4] In 1995 Litvak graduated from the N. I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod,[5] and in 1998 she earned the candidate's degree in physical and mathematical sciences from the latter university with the dissertation Adaptive Control of Conflicting Flows supervised by Mikhail Andreevich Fedotkin.[6] In 1999 she moved to the Netherlands.[1] She completed another doctoral degree in 2002, a Ph.D. from the Eindhoven University of Technology, with the dissertation Collecting Items Randomly Located on a Circle, completed in EURANDOM,[7] jointly promoted by Ivo Adan, Jaap Wessels, and Henk Zijm.[8]
She became a lecturer at the University of Twente in 2002, and was promoted to associate professor in 2011 and full professor in 2018. In 2017, she took on a second part-time affiliation with the Eindhoven University of Technology, and in 2023 she moved from Twente to a full-time position at the Eindhoven University of Technology,[2] as professor of algorithms for complex networks.[9]
Litvak is the author of several popular science books, including:
Litvak was awarded the 2002 Stieltjes Prize for her Ph.D. dissertation.[11] She was the 2011 recipient of the Professor De Winter award of the University of Twente, given annually to recognize the research of a female faculty member.[12] She was named the university's teacher of the year in 2022.[13]
While in the Netherlands, Nelly Litvak married to Pranab Mandal.[14] As of 2020[update] Pranab is Programme Director for Applied Mathematics at the University of Twente.[14] She has two daughters: Natalia (born in 1993 from the first marriage[3]) and Piyali (born in 2005 to Nelly and Pranab).[1] She has younger sister Yekaterina and brother Pyotr.[15][3]