Michael David Mitzenmacher is an American computer scientist working in algorithms. He is Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and was area dean of computer science July 2010 to June 2013. He also runs
My Biased Coin
', a blog about

theoretical computer science computer science (TCS) is a subset of general computer science and mathematics that focuses on mathematical aspects of computer science such as the theory of computation, lambda calculus, and type theory. It is difficult to circumscribe the ...

Education

In 1986, Mitzenmacher attended the Research Science Institute. Mitzenmacher earned his AB at Harvard, where he was on the team that won the 1990 North American Collegiate Bridge Championship. He attended the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

on a Churchill Scholarship from 1991–1992. Mitzenmacher received his PhD in computer science at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1996 under the supervision of

Alistair Sinclair :' Alistair Sinclair (born 1960) is a British computer scientist and computational theorist. Sinclair received his B.A. in mathematics from St. John’s College, Cambridge in 1979, and his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Edinbu ...

. He joined

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 1999.

Research

Mitzenmacher’s research covers the design an analysis of randomised algorithms and processes. With

Eli Upfal __NOTOC__ Eli Upfal is a computer science researcher, currently the Rush C. Hawkins Professor of Computer Science at Brown University. He completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics and statistics at the Hebrew University, Israel in 1978, ...

he is the author of a textbook on randomized algorithms and probabilistic techniques in computer science. Mitzenmacher's PhD thesis was on the analysis of simple randomised load balancing schemes. He is an expert in

hash function A hash function is any function that can be used to map data of arbitrary size to fixed-size values. The values returned by a hash function are called ''hash values'', ''hash codes'', ''digests'', or simply ''hashes''. The values are usually ...

applications such as Bloom filters,

cuckoo hashing Cuckoo hashing is a scheme in computer programming for resolving hash collisions of values of hash functions in a table, with worst-case constant lookup time. The name derives from the behavior of some species of cuckoo, where the cuckoo chick ...

, and

locality-sensitive hashing In computer science, locality-sensitive hashing (LSH) is an algorithmic technique that hashes similar input items into the same "buckets" with high probability. (The number of buckets is much smaller than the universe of possible input items.) Since ...

. His work on min-wise independence gives a fast way to estimate similarity of electronic documents and is used in internet search engines. Mitzenmacher has also worked on erasure codes and error-correcting codes. Mitzenmacher has authored over 100 conference and journal publications. He has served on dozens of program committees in computer science, information theory, and networks, and chaired the program committee of the

Symposium on Theory of Computing The Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. STOC has been organized annually since 1969, typically in May or June; the conference is sponsored by the Association for ...

in 2009. He belongs to the editorial board of

SIAM Journal on Computing The ''SIAM Journal on Computing'' is a scientific journal focusing on the mathematical and formal aspects of computer science. It is published by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). Although its official ISO abbreviation is ...

, Internet Mathematics, and Journal of Interconnection Networks.

Awards and honors

Mitzenmacher became 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 in 2014. His joint paper on low-density parity-check codes received the 2002

IEEE Information Theory 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 operation ...

Best Paper Award. His joint paper on

fountain code In coding theory, fountain codes (also known as rateless erasure codes) are a class of erasure codes with the property that a potentially limitless sequence of encoding symbols can be generated from a given set of source symbols such that the origi ...

s received the 2009 ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Paper Award. In 2019, he was elected as an IEEE Fellow.

Selected publications

* * There is also an earlie
1998 technical report
with the same title. * * *

References

External links

Mitzenmacher’s web page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mitzenmacher, Michael Theoretical computer scientists Living people Harvard University alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Harvard University faculty Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellow Members of the IEEE Science bloggers Santa Fe Institute people Year of birth missing (living people) Alumni of the University of Cambridge American computer scientists