Computer Science
Principles and Methodologies
A tribute to John Backus ,
one of the first members of our Theory Group, written by Alex Aiken
The IBM Computer Science Principles and Methodologies Group (aka the Theory Group) explores foundational issues that confront the computing industry today. Because theory cuts across every aspect of computer science, we tend to interact with a large number of other research teams.
We have ongoing projects in the following areas:
Algorithms :
How can we get computers to solve problems efficiently?
Complexity :
What computational resources (time, storage, etc) do problems
inherently require?
Database
Principles : What models and algorithms are useful in helping
computers store and retrieve information efficiently?
Current Activities
Recent Awards
External Awards
2008 ACM Fellow Election : Ken Clarkson was elected an ACM Fellow
An inaugural 2008 ACM PODS Alberto O. Mendelzon Test-of-Time-Award , awarded to Phokion Kolaitis
2007: Phokion Kolaitis was elected a Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters
2006 AAAS Fellow Election : Ronald Fagin was elected an AAAS Fellow
2005 ACM Fellow Election : Phokion Kolaitis was elected an ACM Fellow
2005 SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize was awarded to Robert Krauthgamer and Uriel Feige (Weizmann Institute of Science; Microsoft Research)
The 2004 SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award was awarded to Ronald Fagin
The 2003 Knuth Prize
was awarded to Miklós Ajtai
IBM Research Awards
2005 Pat Goldberg Memorial Best Paper Award was awarded to Volker Markl, Peter Haas, Nimrod Megiddo, Marcel Kutsch (IBM Germany), T.M. Tran (IBM SVL), and Utkarsh Srivastava (former summer intern, Stanford) (Announced July 2006)
2004 Pat Goldberg Memorial Best Paper Award was awarded to Ronald Fagin, Phokion G. Kolaitis, Lucian Popa, Wang-Chiew Tan (UC Santa Cruz) (Announced August 2005)
2003 Pat Goldberg Memorial Best Paper Award was awarded to Nimrod Megiddo and Dharmendra Modha (Announced August 2004)
2002 IBM Research CS/EE/Math Best Paper Award was awarded to Miklós Ajtai (Announced August 2003)
2001 IBM Research CS/EE/Math Best Paper Awards were awarded to Ronald Fagin, Ravi Kumar, and D. Sivakumar (Announced August 2002)
Members
Miklós Ajtai :
Complexity theory, cryptography, lattice-based algorithms.
Ken Clarkson : Computational
geometry, design and analysis of algorithms,
optimization.
Ronald Fagin :
Logic, complexity theory, database principles, reasoning about
knowledge, information retrieval.
Vitaly Feldman : Learning theory,
computational models of the brain, complexity theory.
Elad Hazan :
Online learning, optimization, computational finance, game theory.
T. S. Jayram :
Complexity theory, algorithms for massive data sets.
Phokion Kolaitis :
Logic in computer science,
computational complexity, database theory
Nimrod
Megiddo : Optimization, machine learning.
David Woodruff : Algorithms, complexity theory, cryptography.
Postdoctoral Fellows
Benny Kimelfeld : Database theory, XML, query optimization,
enumeration algorithms and complexity, probabilistic databases, incomplete information, ranking techniques,
information retrieval.
Mihai Pătraşcu (IBM Raviv Memorial Fellow): Algorithms, data structures
C. Seshadhri : Sublinear algorithms and property testing,
approximation algorithms, computational geometry, machine learning
Summer interns
2009: Jelani Nelson, Ilias Diakonikolas
2008: Shipra Agrawal, Steve Hanneke, Swastik Kopparty, Homin Lee, Jelani Nelson, Prasad Raghavendra
2007: Alexandr Andoni, Seshadhri Comandur, Mihai Pătraşcu
2006: Alexandr Andoni, Nilesh Dalvi, Ben Rossman, Atri Rudra
2005: Kamalika Chaudhuri, Parikshit Gopalan, Satyen Kale, Elitza Maneva, Ciamac Moallemi
2004: Marcelo Arenas, Shuchi Chawla, Iordanis Kerenidis, James Lee, Eugene Nudelman
2003: Iordanis Kerenidis, David Liben-Nowell, Erik Vee, An Zhu
2002:
Gagan
Aggarwal,
Aaron
Archer,
Mayur
Datar,
Subhash
Khot,
Matthias
Ruhl
2001: Aaron Archer, Ziv Bar-Yossef, April
Rasala, Tim Roughgarden, Matthias Ruhl, An Zhu
2000: Andris Ambainis, Ziv Bar-Yossef,
Venkatesan Guruswami,
Liadan O'Callaghan, Adam Kalai, Byunggyoo Kim, John Langford
1999: Moses Charikar, Venkatesan Guruswami, and Amit Sahai
Recent short-term visitors
Bruno Marnette (Apr 7-May 7, 2008)
Lisa Fleischer (Aug 27-31, 2007)
Amit Chakrabarti (Jun 1-29, 2007)
Marcelo Arenas (Jun 4-8, 2007)
Tim Roughgarden (Sep 5-6 and Sep 12-22, 2006)
Amit Chakrabarti (Aug 14-25, 2006)
Matt Valeriote (June 5-10, 2006)
Mihai Patrascu (Apr 26-May 1, 2006)
Daniela Pucci de Farias (Jan 31-Feb 3, 2006)
Jeremy Schwartz (Jan 31-Feb 3, 2006)
Manoj Prabhakaran (Dec 19-Dec 21, 2005)
Yuval Rabani (Oct 10-Oct 21, 2005)
Daniela Pucci de Farias (Aug 1-Aug 5, 2005)
Eli Ben-Sasson (Apr 18-May 5, 2005)
Yuval Rabani (Feb 8-Feb 23, 2005)
Albert Atserias (Jan 31-Feb 11, 2005)
Daniela Pucci de Farias (Jan 18-Jan 24, 2005)
Ravi Sundaram (Nov 8-Nov 15, 2004)
Seffi Naor (Aug 30-Sep 10, 2004)
Amit Chakrabarti (Aug 9-Aug 20, 2004)
Leonard Schulman (Aug 9-Aug 12, 2004)
Daniela Pucci de Farias (Aug 2-Aug 9, 2004)
Moshe Y. Vardi (Jul 26-Jul 30, 2004)
Yuval Rabani (Jun 28-Jul 16, 2004)
Recent longer-term visitors and postdoctoral fellows
Balder ten Cate (Jan - Aug, 2008)
Elitza Maneva (2006-2008) [postdoctoral fellow]
Aranyak Mehta (2005-2007) [postdoctoral fellow]
Erik Vee (2004-2006) [postdoctoral fellow]
Matthias Ruhl (2003-2004) [Joseph Raviv postdoctoral fellow]
Daniela Pucci de Farias (2002-2003)
IBM
Research CS Algorithms & Theory
Dr. Kenneth Clarkson
Senior Manager, Computer Science Principles and Methodologies