The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has named MIT professors Elchanan Mosel and Rosalind Picard as Fellows for Outstanding Achievements in Computing and Information Technology.
The ACM Fellows program recognizes broad and fundamental contributions in areas including algorithms, computer science education, cryptography, data security and privacy, medical informatics, and mobile and network systems, among many other areas. The achievements of the 2021 ACM Fellows underscore the important innovations that shape the technologies we use every day.
elchnan mosel
Mosel is a professor of mathematics and a member of the Center for Statistics and Data Science at the MIT Institute for Data, Systems and Society. His research into discrete functional inequalities, isoperimetry, and hypercontractivity led to the proof that most is stable and confirmed the optimality of the Gomens–Williamson max-cut algorithm under unique game inference from computational complexity. His work on the reconstruction problem on trees provides optimal algorithms and limits for phylogenetic reconstruction in molecular biology and has yielded sharp results in the analysis of Gibbs sampling from statistical physics and inference problems on graphs. His research has addressed open problems in computational biology, machine learning, social choice theory, and economics.
Mosel received a BS from the Open University in Israel in 1992 and an MS (1997) and PhD (2000) degrees in mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was a postdoc in the Microsoft Research Theory Group and a Miller Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 2003 as a professor of statistics and computer science, and spent holidays as a professor at the Weizmann Institute and the Wharton School before joining MIT as a full professor in 2016.
In 2020, he received the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship from the US Department of Defense. Other distinctions include being named a Simons Investigator in Mathematics in 2019, being selected as a fellow of AMS, and receiving the Sloan Research Fellowship, the NSF Career Award, and the Bergman Memorial Award from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation.
“I am honored with this award,” Mosel says. “It makes me realize how fortunate I have been, working with creative and generous collaborators, and guiding brilliant young minds.”
Rosalind Picard
Picard is a scientist, engineer, author, and professor of media arts and sciences at the MIT Media Lab. He is recognized as the founder of the field of affective computing, and has led this research as the head of Media Lab’s influential computing research group. She is also a founding faculty chair of MIT’s Mindhandheart Initiative and a faculty member of the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering. Picard is an IEEE Fellow, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Picard’s inventions are in use by thousands of research teams around the world, as well as in many products and services. She has co-founded two companies: Affectiva (now part of Smart Eye), providing Emotion AI technology now used by more than 25 percent of the global Fortune 500, and Empatica, a wearable to improve health. Sensors and Analytics. Starting with the inventions of Picard and his team, Empatica created the first AI-based smart watch approved by the FDA (in Neurology for the Monitoring of Seizures), which is now helping to bring a potentially lifesaving aid to people with epilepsy. Is.
“This award makes me think about how blessed I am to work with so many wonderful people at MIT, especially at the Media Lab,” notes Picard. “Whenever any of us have recognized our contribution, it is also a recognition of how special this place is.”
