Toniann Pitassi

Toniann Pitassi
Residence	Toronto, Canada
Nationality	American, Canadian
Fields	Mathematics Computer Science
Institutions	University of Toronto
Alma mater	University of Toronto
Doctoral advisor	Stephen Cook
Spouse	Richard Zemel

Toniann Pitassi is a Canadian and American mathematician and computer scientist specializing in computational complexity theory.

A native of Pittsburgh, Pitassi earned bachelor's and master's degrees at Pennsylvania State University before moving to the University of Toronto for her doctoral studies; she earned her Ph.D. in 1992 from Toronto under the supervision of Stephen Cook. After postdoctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego and faculty positions at the University of Pittsburgh and University of Arizona, she returned to Toronto in 2001, and is now a professor in the University of Toronto Department of Computer Science and University of Toronto Department of Mathematics.

She was an invited speaker at International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin in 1998. She was the program chair for the 2012 Symposium on Theory of Computing.

Pitassi's research has largely focused on proof complexity, a branch of computational complexity theory that seeks upper and lower bounds on the lengths of mathematical proofs of logical propositions within various formalized proof systems. The goal of this study is to use these bounds to understand both the time complexity of proof-finding procedures, and the relative strengths of different proof systems.