Blog - Academic Awaking

Adam Smith

Adam Smith (baptized June 16 [O.S. June 5], 1723 – July 17, 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who helped shape the study of political economy during the Scottish Enlightenment. Many people call him the “father of economics” or the “father of capitalism.” He is best known for writing The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), often shortened to The Wealth of Nations.

April 7, 2026 No Comments

Aaron Roth

Aaron Roth is an American computer scientist. He holds the title of Henry Salvatori Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

April 7, 2026 No Comments

Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Vinod Vaikuntanathan is a professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a main researcher at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His research focuses on cryptography, especially a type called homomorphic encryption. He shared the 2022 Gödel Prize with Zvika Brakerski and Craig Gentry.

April 7, 2026 No Comments

Shafi Goldwasser

Shafrira Goldwasser (Hebrew: שפרירה גולדווסר; born 1959) is an Israeli-American computer scientist. She holds the RSA Professorship in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She also serves as a professor of mathematical sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

April 7, 2026 No Comments

Ran Canetti

Ran Canetti (Hebrew: רן קנטי) is an Israeli cryptographer. He is a professor of Computer Science at Boston University. He also serves as a director of the Check Point Institute for Information Security at Tel-Aviv University and as a director of the Center for Reliable Information System and Cyber Security at Boston University.

April 7, 2026 No Comments

Machtey Award

The Machtey Award is given at the annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) to the author or authors of the best student paper or papers. A paper is considered a student paper if all authors are full-time students when the paper is submitted. The Program Committee decides the winner.

April 7, 2026 No Comments

Salil Vadhan

Salil Vadhan is an American computer scientist. He holds the position of Vicky Joseph Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. He earned his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from Harvard in 1995.

April 7, 2026 No Comments

Luca Trevisan

Luca Trevisan (21 July 1971 – 19 June 2024) was an Italian professor who taught computer science at Bocconi University in Milan. His research focused on computer science theory, including topics such as randomness, cryptography, probabilistically checkable proofs, approximation, property testing, spectral graph theory, and sublinear algorithms. He also maintained a blog called in theory, which discussed computer science theory.

April 7, 2026 No Comments

Madhu Sudan

Madhu Sudan was born on September 12, 1966. He is an Indian-American computer scientist who has been a Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences since 2015.

April 7, 2026 No Comments

Ronitt Rubinfeld

Ronitt Rubinfeld was born in 1964. She is a scientist from Israel and the United States who studies computer theory. She works as a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

April 7, 2026 No Comments