Sampath Kannan Will be Next Associate Director of the Simons Institute

Dear friends,

I am delighted to announce that Sampath Kannan will be the next associate director of the Simons Institute. His official appointment begins July 1, 2024. 

Sampath is the Henry Salvatori Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests are in the areas of Algorithmic Fairness, Combinatorial Algorithms, Program Reliability, Streaming Computation, and Computational Biology. Sampath served as associate dean for academics in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Penn between 2006 and 2008 and as division director for the Computing and Communication Foundations Division at NSF from 2008 to 2010. He served as associate director for Theoretical Computer Science at the Simons Foundation from 2010 to 2013. Sampath was the chair of the Computer and Information Science Department at Penn between 2013 and 2018. He is a fellow of the ACM, and the recipient of the ACM SIGACT Distinguished Service Award. He is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Sampath succeeds Sandy Irani, who has served as the Institute’s associate director since 2022. We are deeply grateful to Sandy for her skillful, dedicated leadership, and for her wise and prudent stewardship of our research programs and staff.

Please join me in thanking Sandy, and in welcoming Sampath to the Institute! 

Yours, 

Shafi

Shafi Goldwasser
Director, Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing