ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award Winners – Robert D. Blumofe and Charles E. Leiserson

By Renee Dopplick, ACM Director of Public Policy

April 16, 2014

The Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award honors specific theoretical accomplishments that significantly affect the practice of computing. Paris Kanellakis was a leader in theoretical computer science.

ACM today recognized Robert D. Blumofe and Charles E. Leiserson with the Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for their contributions to robust parallel and distributed computing. Mr. Blumofe is an Executive Vice President at Akamai Technologies. Professor Leiserson is an ACM Fellow and a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

They developed provably efficient randomized scheduling protocols and a set of parallel-language primitives (the simplest elements in a programming language) constituting the Cilk framework, which is comprised of a language and a runtime system. Cilk supports programming multithreaded computations. Their conceptual framework is ubiquitous on multicore platforms and underpins many parallel-programming platforms. Cilk simplifies multiprocessor programming and guarantees mathematically that multithreaded programs with sufficient parallelism run with near-perfect speed.

Pragmatically, their theoretical accomplishments impact our daily lives in tangible ways through improved load balancing, synchronization, and performance of millions of computer systems worldwide.

To learn more about the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award, visit http://awards.acm.org/kanellakis/