John H. Reif (born 1951) is an American academic, and Professor of Computer Science at Duke University, who has made contributions to large number of fields in

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 practical disciplines (includin ...

: ranging from

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 ...

and

computational complexity theory In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved ...

robotics Robotics is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary branch of computer science and engineering. Robotics involves design, construction, operation, and use of robots. The goal of robotics is to design machines that can help and assist human ...

and to game theory.

Biography

John Reif received a B.S. (magna cum laude) from Tufts University in 1973, a M.S. from Harvard University in 1975 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1977. From 1983 to 1986 he was Associate Professor of Harvard University, and since 1986 he has been Professor of Computer Science at Duke University. Currently he holds the Hollis Edens Distinguished Professor, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke University. From 2011-2014 he was Distinguished Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology (FCIT), King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. John Reif is President of Eagle Eye Research, Inc., which specializes in defense applications of DNA biotechnology. He has also contributed to bringing together various disjoint research communities working in different areas of nano-sciences by organizing (as General Chairman) annual Conferences on "Foundations of Nanoscience: Self-assembled architectures and devices" (FNANO) for last 15 years. He has been awarded Fellow of the following organizations:

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 responsi ...

IEEE 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 ...

ACM ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing * ...

, and the Institute of Combinatorics. He is the son of Arnold E. Reif.

Research contributions

John Reif has made contributions to large number of fields in

: ranging from

and

and to game theory. He developed efficient

randomized algorithms A randomized algorithm is an algorithm that employs a degree of randomness as part of its logic or procedure. The algorithm typically uses uniformly random bits as an auxiliary input to guide its behavior, in the hope of achieving good performan ...

and

parallel algorithms In computer science, a parallel algorithm, as opposed to a traditional serial algorithm, is an algorithm which can do multiple operations in a given time. It has been a tradition of computer science to describe serial algorithms in abstract mac ...

for a wide variety of

graph Graph may refer to: Mathematics *Graph (discrete mathematics), a structure made of vertices and edges **Graph theory, the study of such graphs and their properties *Graph (topology), a topological space resembling a graph in the sense of discre ...

geometric Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ca ...

, numeric, algebraic, and logical problems. Hi
Google Scholar H-index
is 68. In the area of robotics, he gave the first hardness proofs for robotic motion planning as well as efficient algorithms for a wide variety of motion planning problems. He also has led applied research projects: parallel programming languages (Proteus System for parallel programming), parallel architectures (Blitzen, a massively parallel machine), data compression (massively parallel loss-less compression hardware), and

optical computing Optical computing or photonic computing uses light waves produced by lasers or incoherent sources for data processing, data storage or data communication for computing. For decades, photons have shown promise to enable a higher bandwidth than th ...

(free-space holographic routing). His papers on these algorithmic topics can be downloade
here

Research in nanoscience

More recently, he has centered his research in

nanoscience The nanoscopic scale (or nanoscale) usually refers to structures with a length scale applicable to nanotechnology, usually cited as 1–100 nanometers (nm). A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. The nanoscopic scale is (roughly speaking) a l ...

and in particular

DNA nanotechnology DNA nanotechnology is the design and manufacture of artificial nucleic acid structures for technological uses. In this field, nucleic acids are used as non-biological engineering materials for nanotechnology rather than as the carriers of geneti ...

DNA computing DNA computing is an emerging branch of unconventional computing which uses DNA, biochemistry, and molecular biology hardware, instead of the traditional electronic computing. Research and development in this area concerns theory, experiments, a ...

, and DNA

nanorobotics Nanoid robotics, or for short, nanorobotics or nanobotics, is an emerging technology field creating machines or robots whose components are at or near the scale of a nanometer (10−9 meters). More specifically, nanorobotics (as opposed to m ...

. In the last dozen years his group at Duke has designed and experimentally demonstrated in the lab a variety of novel self-assembled DNA nanostructures and DNA lattices, including the first experimental demonstrations of molecular scale computation and patterning using DNA assembly. His group also experimentally demonstrated various molecular robotic devices composed of DNA, including one of the first autonomous unidirectional DNA walker that walked on a DNA track. He also has done significant work on controlling errors in self-assembly and the stochastic analysis of self-assembly.

Publications

He is the author of over 200 publications.Publications:
Reif's publications organized by research area

Reif's publications listed on Google Scholar Website
/ref> A selection: * 2003. Hao Yan, Thomas H. LaBean, Liping Feng, and John H. Reif
Directed Nucleation Assembly of Barcode Patterned DNA Lattices
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume 100, No. 14, pp. 8103–8108 (July 8, 2003). * 2004. Peng Yin, Hao Yan, Xiaoju G. Daniel, Andrew J. Turberfield, John H. Reif
A Unidirectional DNA Walker Moving Autonomously Along a Linear Track
Angewandte Chemie, Volume 43, Number 37, pp. 4906–4911 (Sept. 20, 2004). * 2007. John H. Reif and Thomas H. LaBean
Autonomous Programmable Biomolecular Devices Using Self-Assembled DNA Nanostructures
Communications of the ACM, Volume 50, Issue 9, pp. 46–53 (Sept 2007). * 2008. Peng Yin, Rizal F. Hariadi, Sudheer Sahu, Harry M.T.Choi, Sung Ha Park, Thomas H. LaBean, John H. Reif
Programming DNA Tube Circumferences
Science, Vol. 321. no. 5890, pp. 824–826, (August 8, 2008).

Books

*'' Parallel Algorithm Derivation and Program Transformation'', (with Robert Paige and Ralph Wachter), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA 1993. *'' Handbook of Randomized Computing'', (with Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, Panos M. Pardalos and José Rolim), Springer, New York, NY, 2001. *''Synthesis of Parallel Algorithms'', Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, CA, 1993. *'' DNA-based Self-assembly and Nanorobotics'', (with S. Sahu), VDM Verlag, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2008.

References

External links

Reif's Personal Web page

Reif's Duke Web page

Reif's Family, Schooling, Work and Play
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reif, John 1951 births Duke University faculty Harvard University alumni Harvard University faculty Living people Researchers in geometric algorithms Theoretical computer scientists Tufts University alumni Tufts University School of Engineering alumni Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellow Members of the IEEE DNA nanotechnology people