She completed her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in August 2011, where she was affiliated with the Center for Advanced Process Decision-making. Prior to joining The University of Texas at Austin, Aida worked as a research staff member in the mathematical programming group at IBM T.J. Watson research center for two years. Aida's research interest lies at the interface of convex analysis and nonconvex optimization. Her current work is focused on both theoretical and algorithmic aspects of global optimization of nonconvex mixed-integer nonlinear optimization problems.