Lisa Orloff Clark

Lisa Orloff Clark is a New Zealand mathematician, and as of 2023 is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington and Head of the School of Mathematics and Statistics. She works in the field of algebra and also on inquiry-based learning in mathematics education.

Academic career

Clark completed a PhD titled Classifying the Type of Groupoid C*-algebras at Dartmouth College in 2004. Clark then joined the faculty of the Victoria University of Wellington, rising to full professor in 2023. She has published on C*-algebras, groupoids, Steinberg algebras and Leavitt path algebras.

Clark is the Head of the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Victoria University of Wellington. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Inquiry-Based Learning in Mathematics.

In 2018 Clark was an associate investigator on a Marsden grant led by Astrid an Huef and Iain Raeburn, titled Through the looking glass: sharpening the classification program through implications for operator algebras of graphs and groupoids. In 2021 Clark and an Huef were joint principal investigators on another successful Marsden grant, called Establishing a structure theory for C*-algebras of non-Hausdorff groupoids. She was a plenary speaker at the NZMS colloquium in 2019.

In 2022 Clark was awarded the Aitken Lectureship, a joint award between the New Zealand and London Mathematical Societies. Clark gave lectures at Queen's University Belfast, Durham University, Aberystwyth University and at the London Mathematical Society annual meeting.

Selected works