News

Profs from Stanford and Cornell Win Katayanagi Prizes in Computer Science

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 01/12/10

Two professors--one from Stanford University and the other at Cornell University--are being recognized for their contributions in computer science by being named recipients of the Katayanagi Prize. The awards are presented annually by Carnegie Mellon University in cooperation with the Tokyo University of Technology and come with honorariums endowed by Koh Katayanagi, who founded Tokyo Tech and several other technical institutions in Japan.

Recipient Donald Knuth, the uniquely titled Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming at Stanford, authored the multi-volume seminal reference The Art of Computer Programming. Jon Kleinberg, the Tisch University Professor of Computer Science at Cornell, is a computer scientist whose research explores the interface between networks and information.

"Donald Knuth is a living legend," said Randal Bryant, dean of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. "His books have taught thousands of computer scientists how to apply mathematical techniques to determine the efficiency of their algorithms. His TeX typesetting system has become the gold standard for publishing technical articles and books.

"Jon Kleinberg has led a major wave in the analysis of society-scale networks, describing such phenomena as how Web pages link to one another, and who has befriended whom on social media sites," Bryant said. "His work has formed fundamentally new connections between computer science and social science." Kleinberg developed the HITS algorithm, which rates Web pages, while at IBM. He has also researched the "small world" phenomenon, first explored 40 years ago by social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Kleinberg has found that short-path connections--even on computer networks--plays a role in the search process, diminishing the need for a central index and proving useful in the design of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks.