Brief Bio
Eric Vigoda is a Professor of Computer Science
at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 2021.
Previously, he was an Associate Professor (2004-2008) and
Professor (2009-2021) at the Georgia Institute of Technology,
where he served as the Director of the Algorithms and Randomness Center (ARC) (2016-2019). He
was a Visiting Professor at KAIST University in Spring 2015.
He graduated with a BS and MS from Johns Hopkins University in 1994, and
completed his PhD in Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 1999, under
the advisement of Alistair Sinclair. He had postdoc stints at
the University of Edinburgh and the Weizmann Institute, and was
an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago (2002-2004).
Awards:
American Mathematical Society Fellow, 2019.
Fulkerson Prize, 2006.
Machtey Award, 1999.
Former PhD students:
Zongchen Chen, Georgia Tech CS-ACO, 2021. MIT Postdoc.
Andreas Galanis, Georgia Tech CS-ACO, 2014. Oxford, Associate Professor.
Linji Yang, Georgia Tech CS-ACO, 2013. Entrepeneur.
Naya Banerjee, Georgia Tech CS-ACO, 2007. Delaware, Associate Professor.
Ivona Bezakova, University of Chicago CS, 2006. RIT, Professor.
Tom Hayes,
University of Chicago CS, 2003.
New Mexico, Associate Professor.
Undergrad theses mentored:
Stuart Wayland: Quantifying Gerrymandering With Simulated Annealing,
2022.
Sherry Sarkar: Mixing Times of Tournaments, 2020.
Samarth Wahal: Quantifying Gerrymandering using Markov Chain Monte Carlo
Algorithms, 2019.
Additional Undergrad Projects:
Kevin Lai; DIMAP project: A Survey of MCMC for Ferromagnetic Spin Systems, 2023.
Katy Tsao, Yash Vangala, David Wang, Kyle Wong; ERSP project: An Empirical Analysis of MCMC
Convergence in Phylogenetic Applications, 2023.
Former Postdocs worked with:
Antonio Blanca, Penn State, Assistant Professor.
John Wilmes, Brandeis, Assistant Professor.
Charilaos Efthymiou, Warwick, Associate Professor.
Jinwoo Shin, KAIST, Associate Professor.
Juan Vera, Tilburg, Associate Professor.
Daniel Stefankovic, Rochester, Professor.
