UC San Diego Computer Scientist Receives Prestigious Simons Investigator Award

Shachar Lovett, an associate professor in UC San Diego's Department of Computer Science and Engineering, has received a Simons Foundation Investigator award, which supports outstanding theoretical scientists in math, physics, astrophysics and computer science. Lovett will receive $100,000 per year over the next five years. "This Simons award gives me the opportunity to pursue high-risk basic research," said Lovett. "The beauty is we have the freedom to explore completely new techniques.. every once in a while, we can develop something that is incredibly useful." - Structure and Randomness. Lovett wants to understand how specific structures, or the lack of structure, can influence algorithm design "I investigate the types of structures that are important to understanding various computational problems," said Lovett. "By understanding the properties of these structures, we can build faster algorithms, analyze when existing algorithms work or show that a problem is highly difficult and that no efficient algorithm can solve it." On the other hand, some problems have (or seem like they have) no structure at all.