LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 18 May 2016 – Dexter Kozen, the Joseph Newton Pew, Jr. Professor in Engineering at Cornell University, has been selected to receive the prestigious 2016 W. Wallace McDowell Award “for groundbreaking contributions to topics ranging from computational complexity, to the analysis of algebraic computations, to logics of programs and verification.”
Kozen’s research interests span a variety of topics on the boundary of computer science and mathematics: design and analysis of algorithms, computational complexity theory, complexity of decision problems in logic and algebra, and logics and semantics of programming languages. He is the author of over 150 research articles and four books.
He is a former Guggenheim fellow and a fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the European Association of Theoretical Computer Science.
He is a recipient of the John G. Kemeny Prize in Computing, an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award, and the 2016 EATCS Award.
Kozen received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in mathematics in 1974 and his PhD from Cornell in computer science in 1977. After working as a member of the research staff at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center for several years, he returned to Ithaca to join the Cornell faculty in computer science in 1985.
The McDowell Award is given to individuals for outstanding recent theoretical, design, educational, practical, or other innovative contributions in the field of computing. The award may be given for a single contribution of great merit or a series of lesser contributions that have had or are expected to have an important influence on the computer field.
The award consists of a bronze medal and a $2,000 honorarium. The Computer Society will present the award at a ceremony to be held on Wednesday, 8 June 2016 in Atlanta, GA, USA.
One of computing’s most prestigious individual honors, the W. Wallace McDowell Award has a list of past winners that reads like a who’s who of industry leaders. They include FORTRAN creator John W. Backus (1967); supercomputer pioneers Seymour Cray (1968), Gene Amdahl (1976), and Ken Kennedy (1995); the architect of IBM’s mainframe computer Frederick Brooks (1970); Intel Corp. co-founder Gordon Moore (1978); Donald Knuth, the father of algorithm analysis (1980); microprocessor inventor Federico Faggin (1994); World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee (1996); Lotus Notes creator and Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie (2000); and IBM Fellow Ronald Fagin (2012).
View more information about the McDowell Award, including a complete list of past recipients.
