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New England Lab Researchers
Opening in July 2008, Microsoft Research New England would like to introduce and welcome our researchers.
Listed below are permanent researchers, post-docs, visiting researchers, and interns.
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Permanent Researchers |
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Jennifer Chayes, Managing Director
Jennifer Tour Chayes is managing director of the newly opened Microsoft Research New England lab
in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Before this, she was research area manager for
Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science and Cryptography at Microsoft Research Redmond. Chayes joined
Microsoft Research in 1997, when she co-founded the Theory Group. Her research areas include phase
transitions in discrete mathematics and computer science, structural and dynamical properties of
self-engineered networks, and algorithmic game theory. She is the co-author of almost 100 scientific
papers and the co-inventor of more than 20 patents. Read more.
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Christian Borgs, Deputy Managing Director
Christian Borgs is deputy managing director of Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He is also an affiliate professor of mathematics at the University of Washington. Before becoming deputy managing
director of the New England lab, he was a principal researcher and co-manager of the Theory Group at Microsoft
Research. Borgs’ research areas include properties of self-engineered networks, phase transitions in theoretical
computer science, and algorithmic game theory. Read more.
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Butler Lampson, Technical Fellow
Butler is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft and an Adjunct Professor at MIT. He has worked on computer architecture,
local area networks, raster printers, page description languages, operating systems, remote procedure call, programming
languages and their semantics, programming in the large, fault-tolerant computing, transaction processing, computer security,
WYSIWYG editors, and tablet computers. He was one of the designers of the SDS 940 time-sharing system, the Alto personal
distributed computing system, the Xerox 9700 laser printer, two-phase commit protocols, the Autonet LAN, the SPKI system
for network security, the Microsoft Tablet PC software, the Microsoft Palladium high-assurance stack, and several
programming languages. He received the ACM Software Systems Award in 1984 for his work on the Alto, the IEEE Computer
Pioneer award in 1996 and von Neumann Medal in 2001, the Turing Award in 1992, and the NAE’s Draper Prize in 2004. Read more.
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Henry Cohn, Principal Researcher
Henry Cohn’s mathematical interests include symmetry and exceptional structures; more generally, he enjoys any area
in which concrete problems are connected in surprising ways with abstract mathematics. He came to
Microsoft Research as a post-doc in 2000 and joined the theory
group in 2001. In 2007 he became head of the cryptography group, and in 2008 he
moved to Cambridge with Jennifer Chayes and Christian Borgs to help set up Microsoft Research New England. He stays up
late at night worrying about why the 16th dimension isn’t like the 8th or 24th. Read more.
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Adam Tauman Kalai, Senior Researcher
Adam was previously an assistant professor of computer science at Georgia Tech and TTI-Chicago. He received
a PhD at CMU from the ingenious Avrim Blum, followed by an NSF post-doc at MIT under the wise guidance of Santosh Vempala.
His main research interests are game theory (recent), machine learning, and randomized/online algorithms. Read more.
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Yael Tauman Kalai, Researcher
Most recently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Georgia Tech. Before this, Yael was a post-doc
at the Weizmann Institute in Israel and Microsoft Research in Redmond. She graduated from MIT, working in
cryptography under the superb supervision of Shafi Goldwasser.
Read more. |
Post-Docs |
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Mohsen Bayati, Second-Year Post-Doc
Former Ph.D. in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, under the supervision of
Professors Balaji Prabhakar and Amin Saberi. During the summers 2006 and 2005 he interned in the theory
group at Microsoft Research and stochastic analysis group at IBM Research. He is interested in large-scale
networks, distributed algorithms, optimization, computational biology, and data mining. Mohsen has recently
moved to Cambridge, after spending one year with Microsoft Research in Redmond.
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Satyen Kale, Second-Year Post-Doc
Former Ph.D. in the department of Computer Science at Princeton University, under the supervision of
Prof. Sanjeev Arora. His research area is Theoretical Computer Science. His current research is the design
of efficient algorithms for fundamental combinatorial optimization problems by approximately solving their
linear or semidefinite programming relaxations, employing a variety of techniques from Machine Learning,
Game Theory, and Convex Optimization. Satyen has recently moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, after spending one year
in the Theory Group in Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA. He enjoys dancing the tango.
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Yury Makarychev, Second-Year Post-Doc
Former Ph.D. student in Computer Science, Princeton University, advised by Moses Charikar.
M.S. in Mathematics, Moscow State University. He works on approximation algorithms, semidefinite
programming and low distortion metric embeddings. Yury has recently moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, after spending
one year in the Theory Group in Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington.
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Sebastien Roch, Second-Year Post-Doc
Sebastien graduated from the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of
Elchanan Mossel. He is interested in probability, statistics and theoretical computer science,
with an emphasis on biological applications. Sebastien has recently moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts,
after spending one year in the Theory Group in Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA.
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Maria-Florina Balcan, First
Year Post-Doc
Former Ph. D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by
Avrim Blum. Everyone who knows her calls her "Nina," a tradition
originally started by her brother Marius when he was too young
to appreciate longer names. Nina received B.S. and M.S. degrees
from the University of Bucharest, Faculty of Mathematics and
Informatics, Romania. Nina is particularly excited by problems
that explore new frontiers of Machine Learning. She is also
interested in computational aspects of Economics and Game
Theory, as well as Algorithms more broadly. |
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Mark Braverman, First-Year Post-Doc
Formerly a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto supervised
by Stephen Cook, Mark is interested in complexity theory, especially in the theory of real computation.
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Niv Buchbinder, First-Year Post-Doc
Former Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology under the
supervision of Prof Seffi Naor. His main research interests are algorithms for combinatorial problems
in offline and online settings. He is also interested in algorithmic game theory problems. His hobbies
include hiking and he has already hiked in the Himalaya, in the Patagonian Andes, in Peru and Bolivia,
and has also tasted some of Washington state's national parks.
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Constantinos (“Costis”) Daskalakis, First-Year Post-Doc
Former Ph.D. student at U.C. Berkeley, advised by Christos Papadimitriou. He did his undergraduate studies
in the school of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
He’s interested in game theory, computational biology and applied probability. In his spare time he likes
to explore nature, to hike, and to ski.
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Iftach Haitner, First-Year Post-Doc
Former Ph.D. student at the Weizmann Institute of Sciences advised by Omer Reingold. He did his undergraduate
studies at the School of Mathematical Science at Tel Aviv University. Last year he was a summer intern at
the Silicon Valley lab. He’s interested in Foundation of Cryptography and Complexity Theory. Married to Liat
and has two daughters, and in his (rather limited) free time, he swims and does playback theatre.
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Nick Harvey, First-Year Post-Doc
Formerly a Ph.D. student in the EECS department and theory of computation group at MIT, supervised by Prof. Michel Goemans.
Prior to that, Nick was a research developer in the systems and networking group at Microsoft Research, Redmond.
His undergraduate studies were in combinatorial optimization and computer science at the University of Waterloo.
The main themes of his research are optimization algorithms and theoretical aspects of computer networks. His
recent work centers on foundational questions in matchings, matroids, and network coding.
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Mohit Singh, First-Year Post-Doc
Former Ph.D. student in ACO (Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization) at Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon,
advised by Prof. R. Ravi. He is interested in approximation algorithms and combinatorial optimization. Presently, he is
working on approximation algorithms for degree bounded network design problems, as well as approximation algorithms for
stochastic optimization problems. Mohit enjoys ultimate Frisbee and
looks forward to playing chess in Harvard Square.
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Visiting Researchers |
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Susan Athey, Professor of Economics, Harvard University
Susan Athey is a professor of
economics at Harvard University. She previously taught at MIT and Stanford, and
she received her PhD from the Stanford GSB in 1995. She has been working as a
consultant to Microsoft’s Platforms and Services Division (PSD) since June, 2007,
and was named chief economic officer of PSD in the spring of 2008. In the last
year, the focus of both her research and her consulting has been online advertising.
Her broader research interests include auctions and the design of markets, dynamic
games and contracts with hidden information, industrial organization, econometric
identification, and organizational design. She received the John Bates Clark
Medal in 2007 and became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 2008. She is an elected member of the Council of the Econometric Society as
well as the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association. She has
two young children, and her husband, Guido Imbens, is also an economics professor
at Harvard. She used to have hobbies before she had children. Susan will be with
the New England Lab until late December.
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David Karger, Professor of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
David Karger is a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the EECS
department at MIT. David's research interests range widely. One focus is personal information management
(the ways people collect, visualize, and manage the information that is important to them), which
he explores with his Haystack group. Another is the analysis of algorithms, particularly the application
of algorithmic techniques to problems in practice. David has also done work on peer-to-peer systems,
machine learning, network coding, classical information retrieval, mechanism design, scheduling theory,
and the Semantic Web. He has also spent some time working at Akamai and consulting for Google and Vanu, Inc.
David will be with the New England Lab until June of 2009.
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Marek Karpinski, University of
Bonn
Marek Karpinski is currently a Chair Professor of Computer
Science and a Member of Bonn International Graduate School in
Mathematics and Hausdorff Center for Mathematics at the
University of Bonn. He has been doing research and teaching at
various universities and research institutes, among others, in
Berkeley, Princeton, MIT, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, Warsaw,
Edinburgh, and Paris. He is a recipient of several research
prizes. His main research interests are in algorithms and
combinatorial optimization, complexity and circuits,
approximation lower bounds, randomized approximation techniques,
approximate measurements, and various applications in Operation
Research, Statistical Physics, Networks, Internet Algorithms,
and Molecular Biology. Marek will be with the New England Lab
until mid December. |
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Alex Samorodnitsky, The Institute of Computer Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Alex Samorodnitsky is a professor at the School of
Engineering and Computer Science, the Hebrew university of Jerusalem. He received his undergraduate and graduate
degrees in math and computer science from the Hebrew University, as well. Research interests include: Theory of CS,
Coding Theory, and Combinatorics. Alex will be with the New England Lab until August of 2009.
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Weekly Visitors |
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Daron Acemoglu, Professor of Economics, MIT
Daron Acemoglu is Charles P. Kindleberger Professor of Applied Economics
in the Department of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and a member of the Economic Growth program of the
Canadian Institute of Advanced Research. He is also affiliated with
the National Bureau Economic Research, the Center for Economic
Performance, and the Center for Economic Policy Research, and the
Microsoft Research Center. Daron Acemoglu has received a BA in
economics at the University of York, 1989, M.Sc. in mathematical
economics and econometrics at the London School of Economics, 1990,
and Ph.D. in economics at the London School of Economics in 1992. He
was also awarded the John Bates Clark Medal in 2005, given every two
years to the best economist in the United States under the age of 40
by the American Economic Association. Daron will be with the New
England Lab weekly through May 2009.
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Madhu Sudan, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT
Madhu Sudan is the Fujitsu Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science,
as well as the Associate Director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
Madhu Sudan's research interests include computational complexity theory, algorithms and coding theory.
He is best known for his works on probabilistic checking of proofs, and on the design of list-decoding
algorithms for error-correcting codes. In 2002, Madhu Sudan was awarded the Nevanlinna Prize, for outstanding
contributions to the mathematics of computer science, at the International Congress of Mathematicians in
Beijing. Madhu will be with the New England Lab weekly though May 2009.
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Shanghua Teng, Boston University
Shang-Hua Teng is a professor of Boston University.
He received his Ph.D. from CMU, M.S. from USC, and B.S. Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research areas include algorithm
design and analysis, spectral graph theory, optimizations, Algorithmic game theory, computational geometry, and scientific computing.
He received the 2008 ACM-EATCS Gödel Prize (for his joint work with Dan Spielman on Smoothed Analysis). He is also an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow,
winner of Senior Xerox Award for Outstanding Faculty Research (UIUC). He has more than 10 US patents for his work on compiler
optimization and Internet technology. Outside the academic life, he enjoys salsa dancing, traveling and cooking. He will be with
the New England Lab through May 2009.
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Interns |
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Alexandra Kolla
Fourth-year Graduate Student in Computer Science,
U. C. Berkeley, advised by Umesh Vazirani. Research interests: Complexity theory, algorithms, combinatorial optimization.
I am particularly interested in semidefinite programming
hierarchies. I am also interested in spectral graph theory and
quantum cryptography.
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Guy Rothblum
Ph.D. student in computer science at MIT, advised by Shafi
Goldwasser. Guy is interested in all aspects of theoretical
computer science, especially foundational cryptography and
complexity theory. Recently his research has focused on software
protection and on protocols for efficiently delegating
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Jeechul Woo
Jeechul is a graduate student at Harvard Mathematics. His thesis advisor is Noam Elkies, who also advised
his mentor Henry Cohn at Microsoft. His main research interest is the rank problem of elliptic curves and surfaces.
In general, he is interested in trying concrete mathematical problems and playing with equations.
He loves winter in New England because he loves skiing.
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