Mallory is a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University, mentored by Professors Naomi Leonard (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) and Simon Levin (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology). She is broadly inspired by developing mathematical approaches to decision making and optimal control under uncertainty, particularly to solve problems arising in technological, ecological, and sociological contexts. As an applied mathematician, she aims to use these approaches to reveal insights into the “why” behind physical phenomena and provide recommendations for the design or improvement of such systems.

Mallory completed her B.S. in Mathematics and Applied Physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in December 2018, followed by her Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at Cornell University in summer 2025. At Cornell, Mallory’s doctoral research focused on developing dynamic programming based frameworks for optimal control under uncertainty to determine driving strategies in the face of limited traffic signal timing information, to compute enhanced driving directions that also provide lane change timing and effort information, and to better understand when predators in the animal kingdom might decide to utilize motion camouflage tactics while pursuing prey. At Princeton, Mallory is both extending and broadening these mathematical approaches to enhance our understanding of collective behavior in large scale systems of interconnected individuals (e.g., living organisms, technological devices) to investigate the roles that social connections play in shaping outcomes and to deepen our intuition about life-event timing in ecological contexts.