Brenda Lynn Jorgensen Dietrich is an American operations researcher, the Arthur and Helen Geoffrion Professor of Practice in the School of Operations Research at Cornell University.
After earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1980 from the University of North Carolina, with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa,[1][2] Dietrich went to Cornell University intending to get a graduate degree in mathematics.
However, after working as an intern at the United States Department of Energy, she switched to operations research.
[3] She completed her Ph.D. in 1986; her dissertation, A Unifying Interpretation of Several Combinatorial Dualities, was supervised by Robert G.
[4] Dietrich began working at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center while still a graduate student.