Stanford’s Mathematics and Statistics Chair Wins ‘Genius’ Award, Named MacArthur Fellow
Stanford University’s Emmanuel Candès, the Barnum-Simons Chair in Mathematics and Statistics, has been named a MacArthur Fellow. The prestigious recognition is a five-year grant to individuals who show exceptional creativity in their
work and the prospect for still more in the future. It is designed to provide recipients with flexibility to pursue their own artistic, intellectual, and professional activities without specific obligations or reporting requirements.
One of 24 recipients in the class of 2017, Candès is recognized for exploring the limits of signal recovery and matrix completion from incomplete data
sets with implications for high-impact applications in multiple fields. His research focuses on reconstructing high-resolution images from small numbers of random measurements, as well as recovering the missing entries in massive data tables.
At the interface of applied and theoretical mathematics, his work is generating new lines of research in information theory, as well as laying the groundwork for improvements in many devices that make use of signal and image processing methods.
Emmanuel Candès
Photo credit: John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
"From transforming conditions for low-wage workers to identifying internet security vulnerabilities, from celebrating the African-American string band tradition to designing resilient urban habitats, these new MacArthur Fellows bring their exceptional
creativity to diverse people, places, and social challenges. Their work gives us reason for optimism and inspires us all," said Cecilia Conrad, managing director of the MacArthur Fellows Program.
The class of 2017 is comprised of two computer scientists and 12 academics, including the following:
- Sunil Amrith, Mehra Family Professor of South Asian Studies, professor of history, Harvard University
- Annie Baker, co-associate chair in the MFA in Playwriting Program, Hunter College, City University of New York
- Regina Barzilay, Delta Electronics Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Dawoud Bey, professor of photography, Columbia College Chicago
- Emmanuel Candès, Barnum-Simons Chair in Mathematics and Statistics, Stanford University
- Jason De León, associate professor of anthropology, University of Michigan
- Viet Thanh Nguyen, Aerol Arnold Chair of English, professor of American studies and ethnicity, comparative literature, University of Southern California
- Betsy Levy Paluck, professor of psychology and public affairs, deputy director of the Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science and Policy, Princeton University
- Derek Peterson, professor of history and Afro-American and African studies, University of Michigan
- Stefan Savage, professor of computer science and engineering, co-director of the Center for Evidence-Based Security Research, co-director of the Center for Networked Systems, University of California, San Diego
- Tyshawn Sorey, assistant professor of music, Wesleyan University
- Gabriel Victora, Laurie and Peter Grauer Assistant Professor, head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Dynamics, Rockefeller University