Dr. Margaret Cheney joined Matrix in 2024 after having spent most of her 4-decade career as a Professor of Mathematics, including 24 years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and more recently, 13 years at Colorado State University, where she also holds a courtesy appointment in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Most summers and sabbaticals she spent at labs, including the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, the Naval Research Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratory, and the Air Force Research Laboratory, or consulting with Matrix Research. She has published a large number of research papers on inverse problems in acoustics and electromagnetics, including on Synthetic-Aperture Radar. She has served on editorial boards for 5 journals and is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Dr. Cheney has a B.A. in mathematics and physics from Oberlin College, a Ph.D. in mathematics from Indiana University, and also an honorary doctorate from Oberlin College.