Karen I. Aardal (born 1961)[1] is a Norwegian and Dutch applied mathematician, theoretical computer scientist, and operations researcher.

Her research involves combinatorial optimization, integer programming, approximation algorithms, and facility location, with applications such as positioning emergency vehicles to optimize their response time.

Her dissertation, On the Solution of One and Two-Level Capacitated Facility Location Problems by the Cutting Plane Approach, was supervised by Laurence Wolsey.

[7] Aardal was formerly a researcher at the Dutch Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, and additionally affiliated with Eindhoven University of Technology since 2005.

[8] She was elected to the 2019 class of Fellows of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.