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Vadhan Named McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard
Cambridge, Mass. - May 30, 2007 - Computational theorist Salil P. Vadhan, whose research has addressed fundamental issues in computational complexity and cryptography, has been named Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics in Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, effective Jan. 1, 2007.
Vadhan, 34, was previously Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Computer Science at Harvard, where he has been on the faculty since 2001.
"It is safe to say that Professor Vadhan is among the next generation of premier computational theorists in this country," says Venkatesh Narayanamurti, dean of Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and John A. and Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "His stellar work on complexity, cryptography, and randomness has already garnered him numerous accolades."
"Further, it is particularly fitting that he is at Harvard," Narayanamurti adds. "He not only received his undergraduate degree in mathematics and computer science here, but worked with Leslie Valiant, one of the fathers of theoretical computer science and a leading expert in complexity theory. We are extremely fortunate to have two world-class computer scientists from successive generations teaching and doing research side-by-side."
As a computational theorist, Vadhan seeks to understand the mathematical laws governing efficient computation and the resources required for computation, and to apply this understanding to challenges in computer science. His primary research interests are in computational complexity theory, cryptography, randomness in computation, and the interplay among these areas.
Vadhan's work in computational complexity has helped scientists formulate the resource cost -- in time, space, and information -- of various computing tasks. He has also made important contributions such as the "zig zag" product construction of expanders, wherein a small subset of nodes can serve to represent a substantially larger set of nodes. In cryptography, Vadhan has elucidated key properties of zero-knowledge proofs, which allow information to be conveyed without sharing other closely related information.
Vadhan is a member of SEAS' recently created Center for Research on Computation and Society, created to bring together computer scientists with a broad range of researchers in economics, psychology, the law, ethics, neuroscience, and other fields.
Vadhan holds an A.B. from Harvard College, awarded summa cum laude in 1995, and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, awarded in 1999. Following postdoctoral positions at MIT and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., he joined Harvard as an assistant professor in 2001, rising to associate professor in 2004. He has served as an editor of the journals SIAM Journal on Computing and Computational Complexity.
Among other honors, Vadhan has earned the Young Investigator Award from the Office for Naval Research in 2004 and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the National Science Foundation's Early Career Development Award, both in 2002. At Harvard, he received the Phi Beta Kappa Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2004. He received a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship and will be a visiting Miller Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in spring 2008.
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