Charles Eric Leiserson is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, specializing in the theory of

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different fo ...

and

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...

, and particularly practical applications thereof. As part of this effort, he developed the

Cilk Cilk, Cilk++, Cilk Plus and OpenCilk are general-purpose programming languages designed for multithreaded parallel computing. They are based on the C and C++ programming languages, which they extend with constructs to express parallel loops ...

multithreaded language. He invented the

fat-tree The fat tree network is a universal network for provably efficient communication. It was invented by Charles E. Leiserson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1985. k-ary n-trees, the type of fat-trees commonly used in most high-perf ...

interconnection network, a hardware-universal interconnection network used in many supercomputers, including the

Connection Machine A Connection Machine (CM) is a member of a series of massively parallel supercomputers that grew out of doctoral research on alternatives to the traditional von Neumann architecture of computers by Danny Hillis at Massachusetts Institute of Techno ...

CM5, for which he was network architect. He helped pioneer the development of VLSI theory, including the

retiming Retiming is the technique of moving the structural location of latches or registers in a digital circuit to improve its performance, area, and/or power characteristics in such a way that preserves its functional behavior at its outputs. Retiming ...

method of digital optimization with

James B. Saxe James Benjamin Saxe is an American computer scientist who has worked for many years at the DEC Systems Research Center and its successors, the Compaq Systems Research Center and the Systems Research Center of HP Labs. Saxe is known for his highly ...

and

systolic array In parallel computer architectures, a systolic array is a homogeneous network of tightly coupled data processing units (DPUs) called cells or nodes. Each node or DPU independently computes a partial result as a function of the data received from i ...

s with

H. T. Kung Hsiang-Tsung Kung (; born November 9, 1945) is a Taiwanese-born American computer scientist. He is the William H. Gates professor of computer science at Harvard University. His early research in parallel computing produced the systolic array i ...

. He conceived of the notion of

cache-oblivious algorithm In computing, a cache-oblivious algorithm (or cache-transcendent algorithm) is an algorithm designed to take advantage of a processor cache without having the size of the cache (or the length of the cache lines, etc.) as an explicit parameter. An o ...

s, which are algorithms that have no tuning parameters for cache size or cache-line length, but nevertheless use cache near-optimally. He developed the

language for multithreaded programming, which uses a provably good work-stealing algorithm for scheduling. Leiserson coauthored the standard algorithms textbook ''

Introduction to Algorithms ''Introduction to Algorithms'' is a book on computer programming by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, and Clifford Stein. The book has been widely used as the textbook for algorithms courses at many universities and is co ...

'' together with

Thomas H. Cormen Thomas H. Cormen is the co-author of ''Introduction to Algorithms'', along with Charles Leiserson, Ron Rivest, and Cliff Stein. In 2013, he published a new book titled '' Algorithms Unlocked''. He is a professor of computer science at Dartmout ...

Ronald L. Rivest Ronald Linn Rivest (; born May 6, 1947) is a cryptographer and an Institute Professor at MIT. He is a member of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and a member of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Inte ...

, and

Clifford Stein Clifford Seth Stein (born December 14, 1965), a computer scientist, is a professor of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia University in New York, NY, where he also holds an appointment in the Department of Computer Scie ...

. Leiserson received a BS degree in computer science and mathematics from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1975 and a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

degree in computer science from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

in 1981, where his advisors were Jon Bentley and

. He then joined the faculty of the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, where he is now a

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

. In addition, he is a principal in the Theory of Computation research group in the

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

, and he was formerly director of research and director of system architecture for

Akamai Technologies Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American content delivery networkJ. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. (CDN), cybersecurity, and cloud service company, providing web and Internet security services. Akamai's Inte ...

. He was Founder and chief technology officer of Cilk Arts, Inc., a start-up that developed

technology for multicore computing applications. ( Cilk Arts, Inc. was acquired by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

in 2009.) Leiserson's dissertation, ''Area-Efficient VLSI Computation'', won the first

ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award The ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award is awarded annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to the authors of the best doctoral dissertations in computer science and computer engineering. The award is accompanied by a prize of US $20,000 a ...

. In 1985, the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

awarded him a

Presidential Young Investigator Award The Presidential Young Investigator Award (PYI) was awarded by the National Science Foundation of the United States Federal Government. The program operated from 1984 to 1991, and was replaced by the NSF Young Investigator (NYI) Awards and Presiden ...

. He is a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM), the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

(AAAS), the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

(IEEE), and the

Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is a professional society dedicated to applied mathematics, computational science, and data science through research, publications, and community. SIAM is the world's largest scientific socie ...

(SIAM). He received the 2014 Taylor L. Booth Education Award from the

IEEE Computer Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operati ...

"for worldwide computer science education impact through writing a best-selling algorithms textbook, and developing courses on algorithms and parallel programming." He received the 2014 ACM-IEEE Computer Society Ken Kennedy Award for his "enduring influence on parallel computing systems and their adoption into mainstream use through scholarly research and development." He was also cited for "distinguished mentoring of computer science leaders and students." He received the 2013 ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for "contributions to robust parallel and distributed computing."

References

External links

Home page
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Appearance on WMBR's

' radio show October 27, 2004 {{DEFAULTSORT:Leiserson, Charles American computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Living people Researchers in distributed computing Yale University alumni Carnegie Mellon University alumni 1953 births American chief technology officers

See also

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Further reading

External links