Samir Khuller

Samir Khuller received his MS and PhD from Cornell University in 1989 and 1990, respectively, under the supervision of Vijay Vazirani. He spent two years as a Research Associate at UMIACS working with Uzi Vishkin, at the University of Maryland, before joining the CS Department in 1992, where he is currently the Elizabeth Stevinson Iribe Chair for CS. He spent several summers at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, and also visited the IBM Tokyo Research Lab for several weeks. From 2004 to 2008, he was the Associate Chair for Graduate Education. His research interests are in graph algorithms, discrete optimization, and computational geometry. He has published about 180 journal and conference papers, and several book chapters on these topics. He was an editor for the journals Algorithmica and International Journal on Foundations of Computer Science, was Problems Editor for ACM Trans. on Algorithms, and is currently a columnist for SIGACT News and Associate Editor for Networks. He has served on several program committees, including SODA 1997, APPROX 1999, APPROX 2000 (chair), STOC 2003, PODS 2006, SODA 2007, APPROX 2010, ESA 2010, STOC 2013, and SPAA 2017. He served on the ESA Steering Committee from 2012 to 2016. He received the National Science Foundation's Career Development Award, several Dept. Teaching Awards, the Dean's Teaching Excellence Award and also a CTE-Lilly Teaching Fellowship. In 2003, he and his students were awarded the Best Newcomer Paper Award for the ACM PODS Conference. He received the University of Maryland's Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award in 2007, as well as a Google Research Award. In 2016, he received the European Symposium on Algorithms inaugural Test of Time Award, for his work with Sudipto Guha on Connected Dominating Sets. He graduated at the top of the Computer Science class at IIT-Kanpur. As chair, he led the development of the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Innovation, a project slated for completion in 2018.