Columbia University in the City of New York

Theory

Christos Papadimitriou and Mihalis Yannakakis Awarded the John von Neumann Theory Prize

Christos H. Papadimitriou and Mihalis Yannakakis Honored by INFORMS for their Significant Contributions to the Field of Operations Research and Analytics.

Tim Roughgarden Elected Fellow of the ACM

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has elected Tim Roughgarden as an ACM fellow, recognizing his outstanding contributions to the field of computer science and algorithmic game theory.

Christine Li (SEAS ’26) Named Churchill Scholar

Li's research focuses on quantum computing, and she plans to pursue an MPhil in Advanced Computer Science at Churchill College, Cambridge.

About

The group does research on the fundamental capabilities and limitations of efficient computation.

In addition, they use computation as a lens to gain deeper insights into problems from the natural, social, and engineering sciences.

The group is highly collaborative, both within Columbia and among peer institutions. They hold a weekly Theory Lunch and a bi-weekly Student Seminar. Most graduate students have (at least) two advisors and collaborate with several professors and other students. Some of the faculty are cross-listed with the IEOR department and the Data Science Institute.