Constantinos Daskalakis wins prestigious Nevanlinna Prize

Professor Costis Daskalakis.                                                                                Photo: Courtesy of Professor Daskalakis

Adam Conner-Simon | CSAIL

EECS Professor Constantinos (“Costis”) Daskalakis has won the 2018 Rolf Nevanlinna Prize, one of the most prestigious international awards in mathematics.

Announced at the International Conference of Mathematicians in Brazil, the prize from the Intenational Mathematics Union (IMU) is awarded every four years (alongside the Fields Medal) to a scientist under 40 who has made major contributions to the mathematical aspects of computer science.

Daskalakis, also a principal investigator the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), was honored by the IMU for “transforming our understanding of the computational complexity of fundamental problems in markets, auctions, equilibria, and other economic structures,” according to the citation. The award comes with a monetary prize of 10,000 euros.

“Costis combines amazing technical virtuosity with the rare gift of choosing to work on problems that are both fundamental and complex,” says CSAIL Director Daniela Rus. “We are all so happy to hear about this well-deserved recognition for our colleague.”

A native of Greece, Daskalakis received an undergraduate degree from the National Technical University of Athens and a PhD in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. He has previously received such honors as the 2008 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Doctoral Dissertation Award, the 2010 Sloan Fellowship in Computer Science, and the Simons Investigator Award from the Simons Foundation. His work on the Nash equilibrium, with Paul Goldberg and Christos Papadimitriou, received the Kalai Game Theory and Computer Science Prize from the Game Theory Society and the Outstanding Paper Prize from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).

Created in 1981 by the Executive Committee of the IMU, the prize is named after the Finnish mathematician Rolf Nevanlinna. The prize is awarded for outstanding contributions on the mathematical aspects of informational sciences. Recipients are invited to participate in the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, an annual networking event that also includes recipients of the ACM A.M. Turing Award, the Abel Prize, and the Fields Medal.