Rasmus Pagh is a Danish computer scientist and a professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...

. His main work is in

algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing c ...

and

data structures In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, a ...

, and he is particularly known for the

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 ...

algorithm and for co-founding the Basic Algorithms Research Center, BARC, in Copenhagen.

Early life and education

Rasmus Pagh was born in Copenhagen, but soon after his family moved to Esbjerg in western Denmark. He went to high school at Rødkilde Amtsgymnasium where he participated in the "JP Forsker" science competition, and in the "Georg Mohr" mathematics competition. After graduating in 1994, he went to study mathematics and computer science at Aarhus University. In 1998 he started his PhD with Peter Bro Miltersen and started writing articles about

hashing Hash, hashes, hash mark, or hashing may refer to: Substances * Hash (food), a coarse mixture of ingredients * Hash, a nickname for hashish, a cannabis product Hash mark *Hash mark (sports), a marking on hockey rinks and gridiron football field ...

and efficient dictionaries, culminating in his work on

. Soon after his thesis defence was in the fall of 2002 he became an assistant professor at the recently founded

IT University of Copenhagen The IT University of Copenhagen (Danish language, Danish: ''IT-Universitetet i København'', abbreviated ITU) is a public university and research institution in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is specialized in the Academic discipline#Multidisciplinary, ...

Career

In 2007, Rasmus founded the Scalable Query Evaluation for Reliable Databases (SQERD) project. The project aimed at applying modern algorithmic techniques to problems arising in database management systems in connection with the evaluation of queries. From 2011-2015, he ran the MaDaMS project, which partnered with Demetra A/S,

Aarhus University Aarhus University ( da, Aarhus Universitet, abbreviated AU) is a public research university with its main campus located in Aarhus, Denmark. It is the second largest and second oldest university in Denmark. The university is part of the Coimbra Gr ...

and Apptus AB at finding more efficient approaches to data mining. Rasmus Pagh was made full professor at ITU with his Inaugural Lecture in 2013. In 2014, he received an ERC Consolidator Grant for a project on Scalable Similarity Search. The project resulted in many new algorithms, including a way to prevent

false negatives A false positive is an error in binary classification in which a test result incorrectly indicates the presence of a condition (such as a disease when the disease is not present), while a false negative is the opposite error, where the test result ...

in high dimensional search. In 2017 Pagh co-founded the Basic Algorithms Research Center, BARC, in Copenhagen with

Mikkel Thorup Mikkel Thorup (born 1965) is a Danish computer scientist working at University of Copenhagen. He completed his undergraduate education at Technical University of Denmark and his doctoral studies at Oxford University in 1993. From 1993 to 1998, h ...

, Thore Husfeldt and Stephen Alstrup. Soon thereafter he took a sabbatical to join the

Simons Institute Simons is a surname of Scandinavian origins and a variant of Sigmundsson, a patronymic surname with roots in proto-Germanic ''*segaz'' and ''*mundō'', giving a rough translation of "protection through victory". Notable people A * Alan S ...

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 ...

and become a Google visiting scholar. In 2019, Rasmus Pagh became an Associate Editor of the ''

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 ...

''. In 2020, Rasmus Pagh received the

European Symposium on Algorithms The European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA) is an international conference covering the field of algorithms. It has been held annually since 1993, typically in early Autumn in a different European location each year. Like most theoretical computer ...

Test-of-Time award for his 2001 work on cuckoo hashing with

Flemming Friche Rodler Flemming is a surname and a male given name referring, like the more common '' Fleming'', to an inhabitant (or descendant thereof) of Flanders,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pagh, Rasmus Living people People from Copenhagen Danish computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists Aarhus University alumni Academic staff of the IT University of Copenhagen 1975 births

Early life and education

Career

See also

References