30 September 2004A MacArthur Fellow in (Theoretical) Computer Science
Each year, the MacArthur Foundation awards several five-year grants to individuals who show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work. The program selects individuals of all ages and from all fields and offers recipients flexibility to pursue their work without reporting requirements. This award is often labelled the "genius award", and I first read about it in a science-in-fiction novel, viz. The Bourbaki Gambit by Carl Djerassi, that I would recommend to my readers.
Quoting from the official FAQ guide, the MacArthur fellowships program works under two assumptions that make amazing reading these days:
The MacArthur Fellows Program functions
under two assumptions: first, that human creativity is wonderfully
diverse, and second, that individuals are likely to be more productive
if they have support for their vision and the opportunity to design
their working conditions. Recipients are chosen for their potential to
make exceptionally creative contributions to their respective fields.
I wish there were awards like these in a European setting!
Anyway, the news is that, for the second year running, one of the awards went to a (theoretical) computer scientist, viz. Daphne Koller, who is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University. (Look at her web page for more details on her work. Her work builds on the framework of probability theory, decision theory, and game theory, but uses techniques from artificial intelligence and computer science to apply this framework to complex real-world problems.) This award is likely to please the people working on Bayesian networks at my department. Congratulations Daphne!
For the record, one of last year's recipients of the award was Eric Demaine.
It is good for the whole field of Computer Science to see the work of some of its young members recognized by one of these awards.
Last modified: Thursday, 30-Sep-2004 09:18:12 CEST.