From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Tue Sep 20 2005 - 17:14:22 UTC
----- Original Message -----
From: Cornell News Service<mailto:cunews_at_cornell.edu>
To: CUNEWS-CAMPUS-L<mailto:CUNEWS-CAMPUS-L_at_cornell.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 12:33 PM
Subject: Featuring Cornell: Kleinberg wins 'genius award'
Cornell Professor Jon Kleinberg receives 2005 MacArthur 'Genius Award'
Sept. 20, 2005
By Blaine Friedlander Jr.
ITHACA, N.Y. -- The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Kleinberg, who received his bachelor's degree from Cornell in 1993
"I was completely surprised when I heard about this," Kleinberg said.
The MacArthur Fellowships are awarded based on "exceptional
Since the original demonstration of the phenomenon four decades ago
In addition, Kleinberg has developed an algorithm -- a method on
Recently he has applied these ideas to sociology, and is a member of
His work is useful to biologists as well. Four years ago, Kleinberg
His textbook, "Algorithm Design" (Addison-Wesley, 2005), written with
Kleinberg received his S.M. degree (1994) and Ph.D. (1996) from the
-30-
Media Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Tue Sep 20 2005 - 17:18:25 UTC
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Sept05/KleinbergMacArthur.bpf.html
today (Sept. 20) named Jon Kleinberg, Cornell professor of computer
science, among the 25 new MacArthur Fellows -- the so-called "Genius
Awards" -- for 2005. He will receive $500,000 in no-strings-attached
support over the next five years.
and became a faculty member just three years later, is a computer
scientist with a reputation for tackling important, practical
problems and in the process deriving deep mathematical insights. He
is best known for his contributions to network theory, particularly
in expanding the "small worlds" concept and in developing improved
methods for searching the World Wide Web. But his research also
covers Internet routing, data mining, comparative genomics and
protein structure and the sociology of the Web.
"Then I thought back on all the people who have won this and felt
humbled." Among previous recipients, he pointed out, are Paul
Ginsparg, Cornell professor of physics and creator of the online
ArXiv of physics research, and Kleinberg's Cornell classmate Sendhil
Mullainathan '93, now a professor of economics at Harvard.
creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track
record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the
fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work." Recipients
include writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists,
teachers and entrepreneurs. The foundation does not require any
reports or evaluation from the recipients. The grant is paid in
quarterly installments over five years. "It's a chance to do things
that would be hard to do otherwise," Kleinberg said. "It gives you a
level of freedom and flexibility that would be hard to get any other
way." He added that he is still considering how to use the grant.
by Stanley Milgram, it has become widely understood that any two
people are linked by a relatively small number of connections among
mutual acquaintances -- or "six degrees of separation." The same
mathematical principles apply to computer or other networks as well
as networks of people. Kleinberg extended this concept by introducing
the notion of navigability -- how well the information structure of
the network allows individuals to make distant connections
efficiently. He was able to prove that in networks with random
connections, a computer algorithm with only local information has no
way to find the shortest path to a distant point. This demonstration
has important implications both in sociology and in distributed
network architecture design and in applications such as peer-to-peer
file sharing.
which computer programs can be based -- for identifying the structure
of Web site interactions. His algorithm distinguishes "authority"
sites, which contain definitive information, from "hub" sites, which
refer to authority sites using hyperlinks. The algorithm is used in
several contemporary Web search engines, where sites that are most
linked to by the most important hubs are listed higher in search
results. Beyond that, the algorithm makes it possible to identify
communities of interest on the Web without explicit effort needed by
members and even without an awareness of the existence of the
community, simply by examining links between sites.
a group of computer scientists and sociologists collaborating to
study the sociology of the web. "It's great to be working with
sociologists, because they bring such different perspectives and
they're so good at posing interesting questions," he noted.
worked with Cornell researchers to compare the genomes of related
plant species. The researchers sought to locate important genes that
were identified in one species but not in another. This gives
researchers clues to how both species evolved from a common ancestor.
Making "comparative gene maps" had been a slow, painstaking process
that in the past had been done by hand, taking months or years. With
algorithms developed by Kleinberg and his collaborators, comparative
genomes of maize and rice were made in minutes. The program also
found evidence of an ancestral chromosome in maize that did not turn
up in the handmade maps.
Cornell Professor Eva Tardos, introduces students to algorithms by
looking at the real-world problems. In a clear style, the book shows
how to analyze and define problems and to recognize design principles
that are appropriate for a given situation.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has held research positions
at IBM in the Theory and Computation Group (1995), the Computer
Science Principles and Methodologies Group (1996-97) and, since 1998,
continues to be a member of the Visiting Faculty Program at the IBM
Almaden Research Center.
Phone: (607) 254-8093
E-Mail: bpf2_at_cornell.edu<mailto:bpf2_at_cornell.edu>
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