Andrea W. Richa

Andrea W. Richa is a President's Professor at Arizona State University (ASU), holding positions in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence (SCAI), Barrett Honors College, and multiple research centers including the Biodesign Institute's Center for Biocomputing, Security, and Society. She specializes in distributed algorithms, programmable matter, and bio-inspired computing. Richa has led major research initiatives, including a DoD MURI award and an NSF CAREER Award, and has delivered keynote speeches at top conferences like DISC and LATIN. Her work focuses on self-organizing particle systems, wireless networks, and algorithmic foundations of active matter.

Educations: PhD (Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 1998), M.S. (Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, 1995), B.S. (Computer Science, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1989).

Research Interests: Distributed algorithms, programmable matter, bio-inspired systems, wireless communication models, graph algorithms, combinatorial optimization, and resource allocation. She leads the Self-Organizing Particle Systems Lab and is part of SCAI's Theory and Algorithms group.

Awards: 2024 ASU Mentorship Award, 2021 Mentor of the Year, 2017 SCAI Research Excellence Award, NSF CAREER Award (1999), and multiple grants including DoD MURI. Her research spans theoretical and applied domains, with over 150 publications in top venues.

Grants: Current DoD MURI funding (2019-25), NSF awards on Markov chain algorithms and active matter (2021-25), and prior funding on programmable matter (2014-2017).

Labs/Teams: SOPS Lab (sops.engineering.asu.edu), contributing to interdisciplinary research in algorithmic matter and bio-inspired systems.