Jonathan Kelner

I am an Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics in the MIT Department of Mathematics and a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

My research focuses on the application of techniques from pure mathematics to the solution of fundamental problems in algorithms and complexity theory. The main goal of my work is to use interesting theory to develop practical algorithms for real-world questions. I've written papers in combinatorial optimization, mathematical programming, spectral graph theory, distributed computing, machine learning, computational geometry and topology, computational biology, signal processing, and random matrix theory, among others. See my Publications page for more about my work.

I was an undergraduate at Harvard, and I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT in 2006. Before joining the MIT faculty, I spent a year as a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. For more about my background, please see my (slightly outdated) CV.

I have received a variety of awards for my work, including an NSF CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the NEC Award for Research in Computers and Communication, the Sprowls Doctoral Dissertation Award, the Best Student Paper Award at the Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC) in 2004, and the Best Paper Award at STOC 2011. In 2008, I was awarded the Kokusai Denshin Denwa Junior Faculty Chair, and in 2011, I received the Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award.