Lenore Blum

Timeline

1. 1942–1968

   From architecture to mathematics

   Born in New York in 1942, she attends school in Caracas and begins architecture studies at Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1959. She earns a mathematics BS at Simmons College in 1963 and a mathematics PhD at MIT in 1968, supervised by Gerald Sacks.

2. 1968–1974

   Berkeley and Mills College

   With her 1968 doctorate, she takes a postdoctoral fellowship and lectureship in mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. She joins Mills College in 1973 and founds its Mathematics and Computer Science Department in 1974, serving as head or co-head for 13 years.

3. 1975–1981

   President of the AWM

   From 1975 to 1978, she serves as president of the Association for Women in Mathematics, which she helps found. She co-directs the Math/Science Network and its Expanding Your Horizons conferences for high school girls from 1975 to 1981.

4. 1986–1989

   Randomness and real computation

   In 1986, she coauthors the Blum Blum Shub pseudorandom number generator with Manuel Blum and Michael Shub; it generates numbers by squaring modulo the product of two large primes. With Shub and Steve Smale, she introduces a theory of computation and complexity over the real numbers in 1989.

5. 1988–1999

   Complexity and Real Computation

   In 1988, she joins the Theory Group at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, and from 1992 to 1996 she serves as deputy director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute there. During a visiting professorship in mathematics and computer science at City University of Hong Kong from 1996 to 1998, she works on Complexity and Real Computation, published in 1998 with Felipe Cucker, Mike Shub and Steve Smale to develop complexity theory for scientific computing. She joins Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science in 1999.

6. 1999–2007

   Women@SCS and Project Olympus

   In 1999, she founds Women@SCS at Carnegie Mellon to support women in computer science. She receives the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring in 2005. In 2007, she founds Project Olympus, a proof-of-concept innovation center that helps faculty and students turn university research into companies.

7. 2021

   The Conscious Turing Machine

   In 2021, she and Manuel Blum submit “A Theory of Consciousness from a Theoretical Computer Science Perspective: Insights from the Conscious Turing Machine,” which defines the Conscious Turing Machine (CTM). The model formalizes a version of cognitive neuroscientist Bernard Baars’ Global Workspace Theory of consciousness.

8. April 2024

   American Academy election

   In April 2024, she is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

9. April 2026

   The CTM-AI blueprint

   In April 2026, she coauthors “CTM-AI: A Blueprint for General AI Inspired by a Model of Consciousness” with Haofei Yu, Yining Zhao, Manuel Blum and Paul Pu Liang. The paper proposes an AI system that combines the CTM with foundation models and uses many processors to select, integrate and exchange information.

10. As of October 2026

    Emerita and visiting professor

    As of October 2026, she is Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science Emerita at Carnegie Mellon University and a visiting chair professor at Peking University. Her research with Manuel and Avrim Blum develops designs for conscious AI, drawing on theoretical computer science and cognitive neuroscience.