Danny C. Sorensen received a B.S. (1972) from the University of California at Davis and both an M.A. (1975) and Ph.D. (1977) from the University of California at San Diego. He then worked at the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois and is now a Noah Harding Professor of Computational and Applied Mathematics at Rice University in Houston, Texas.

Professor Sorensen works in the general area of numerical analysis. His current research involves the design, analysis, and computer implementation of algorithms for solving fundamental problems in linear algebra. The primary focus of this research has been on very large-scale eigenvalue problems. Extremely large problems often require the use of parallel algorithms and software. Professor Sorensen and his colleagues have developed a software package, ARPACK, for solving large-scale symmetric, nonsymmetric standard, or generalized eigenvalue problems. The software is currently being used to solve nonsymmetric problems with 16 million degrees of freedom. Currently, Professor Sorensen is working on dimension reduction techniques for dynamical systems. The projection techniques used for large eigenvalue computations are being adapted to provide model order reduction for very large linear time invariant control systems.