School Notes: School of Engineering & Applied Science
November/December 2022

Professor wins Breakthrough Prize

Daniel Spielman ’92, the Sterling Professor of Computer Science, Statistics and Data Science, and Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, won the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics for “multiple discoveries in theoretical computer science and mathematics.” The prestigious prize comes with a $3 million award. Spielman, who has taught at Yale since 2006, has produced work that has led to significant and very practical benefits in the fields of computing, signal processing, and engineering. The Breakthrough Prize Foundation and its founding sponsors—Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Julia and Yuri Milner, and Anne Wojcicki ’96—also awarded honorees for game-changing discoveries in fundamental physics and life sciences.

Researchers to lead blockchain effort

With a grant from the Algorand Foundation, Yale researchers are leading a cross-disciplinary team of experts working to advance blockchain systems, while exploring their connections to economics and law. The five-year grant for $5.75 million will fund PAVE: A Center for Privacy, Accountability, Verification, and Economics of Blockchain Systems. The center will be led by Charalampos Papamanthou, associate professor of computer science. The overall goal of the Yale-led project is a multifaceted approach designed to accelerate the deployment and adoption of blockchain, a decentralized, communally maintained database designed to reliably store digital information. The members of PAVE will work to bring together fields of study that rarely collaborate in the area of blockchain. 

Professor elected to IFAC

Kumpati Narendra, the Harold W. Cheel Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering, has been elected a Fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). Narendra was cited for his “extensive contributions spanning several areas of control engineering and systems theory, including stability theory, adaptive systems, and learning, as a theoretician, practitioner, and educator.” He will be formally honored at the IFAC World Congress in Yokohama, Japan, in July 2023.