Ermelinda DeLaViña is an American mathematician specializing in graph theory.
[2] DeLaViña grew up in a working-class family in Texas, with roots stretching back for five generations there.
Inspired by a 9th-grade algebra teacher, she aimed for a college education despite the discouragement of her school counselors.
She started her undergraduate studies at the University of Houston, but dropped out after one term, and after working for two years began again at the University of Texas–Pan American,[1] where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a minor in computer science in 1989,[2] becoming the first in her family with a college degree.
Her doctoral supervisor was Siemion Fajtlowicz, with whom she worked on the Graffiti computer program for automatically formulating conjectures in graph theory.