Computer Science Researcher Earns Honor

  • Published
  • By Maria Callier
  • AFOSR (Quantech)
Arlington, Va. --  An Air Force Office of Scientific Research-supported professor has been awarded the 2007 Knuth Prize for Theoretical Computer Science for creative and influential contributions to the theory of distributed computing.

The recipient is Dr. Nancy Lynch, the eighth awardee and the first female to be honored. Ms Lynch is the NEC Chair, Professor of Software Science and Engineering in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Knuth Prize for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science is awarded every 18 months by the ACM Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory, and the IEEE Technical Committee on the Mathematical Foundations of Computing. The prize includes a $5,000 award.

According to Ms. Lynch, specific projects funded by AFOSR over the years involved the development of algorithms and the impossibility results for basic problems in distributed computation, such as distributed consensus, resource allocations, clock synchronization, and implementation of coherent (atomic) memory as well as cryptography.

"All of these topics were relevant to the Knuth prize," said Ms. Lynch.

"Professor Lynch's AFOSR-supported research in areas such as timing and communication within distributed systems will help us understand how to design and deploy the next generation of sensor networks," said David R. Luginbuhl, AFOSR program manager. "Her results in these areas exemplify her achievements in the theory of computing that have resulted in this well-deserved honor."

Since receiving the Knuth Prize, Lynch continues to focus on what she calls 'fault-tolerant computing' in mobile wireless networks.

By funding research efforts for the Air Force in relevant scientific areas like the ones Ms. Lynch has been investigating, AFOSR continues to expand the horizon of scientific knowledge. AFOSR is part of Air Force Materiel Command's Air Force Research Laboratory.