Raissa D'Souza is interested in using ideas from statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics to understand self-organization in natural and engineered systems, especially networks. She is currently a member of MSN Search, attempting to apply such concepts to web search.   In Summer 2005, she will be leaving MSN and joining the faculty of the newly formed Department of Computational Science and Engineering at UC Davis.

Raissa received a PhD in statistical physics from MIT, for interdisciplinary research done jointly in the Lab for Computer Science (in the Information Mechanics group).  She joined Microsoft in 2002 as a post doc in the Theory Group at Microsoft Research. Prior to that, Raissa was a post doc in the Math Center at Bell Labs.