Indian Mathematician wins prestigious Knuth Prize

In a great news for the Indian mathematical community, renowned mathematician and computer scientist Ravindran Kanan has been awarded the prestigious Knuth Prize for the year 2011.

Ravi Kannan is currently a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India, where he leads the algorithms research group. He is also the first adjunct faculty of Computer Science and Automation Department of Indian Institute of Science. Before joining Microsoft, he was the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Computer Science and Professor of Applied Mathematics at Yale University. He has also taught at MIT and CMU. The ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (SIGACT) will present its 2011 Knuth Prize to Ravi Kannan for developing influential algorithmic techniques aimed at solving long-standing computational problems.

Ravi Kannan did his B.Tech at IIT, Bombay and PhD. at Cornell University. His research interests include Algorithms, Theoretical Computer Science and Discrete Mathematics as well as Optimization. His work has mainly focused on efficient algorithms for problems of a mathematical (often geometric) flavor that arise in Computer Science. He has worked on algorithms for integer programming and the geometry of numbers, random walks in n-space, randomized algorithms for linear algebra and learning algorithms for convex sets.

The Knuth Prize is awarded every one and a half years since 1996 and includes an award of $5000. The prize is awarded by ACM SIGACT and by IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Committee on the Mathematical Foundations of Computing. Prizes are awarded in alternation at the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing and at the IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, which are among the most prestigious conferences in theoretical computer science.

In contrast with the Gödel Prize, which recognizes outstanding papers, the Knuth Prize is awarded to individuals for their overall impact in the field.

Source: Wikipedia