Mihalis Yannakakis

Mihalis Yannakakis
Name	Mihalis Yannakakis
Native name	Μιχάλης Γιαννακάκης
Birth date	1953
Birth place	Athens, Greece
Fields	Computer science, Mathematics, Computer engineering
Workplaces	Bell Labs, Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley, École Normale Supérieure, Courant Institute
Alma mater	National Technical University of Athens, University of California, Berkeley
Doctoral advisor	Richard Karp
Known for	Complexity theory, Database theory, Algorithms, Verification

Contents

Mihalis Yannakakis is a Greek-born computer scientist and mathematician noted for foundational work in computational complexity theory, algorithms, and database theory. He has held positions at leading institutions including Bell Labs, Columbia University, and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and has been recognized by major awards such as the Gödel Prize and the Knuth Prize. Yannakakis's research has influenced topics ranging from NP-completeness and the traveling salesman problem to constraint satisfaction problem and model checking.

Early life and education

Born in Athens in 1953, Yannakakis studied engineering at the National Technical University of Athens before moving to the United States to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley he worked under the supervision of Richard Karp and earned his Ph.D. with a dissertation addressing topics connected to graph theory and combinatorial optimization. During his formative years he interacted with researchers from institutions such as Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Princeton University, situating his training within the emerging networks of theoretical computer science.

Yannakakis's early career included a postdoctoral period and research appointments at Bell Labs where he collaborated with scientists from AT&T and groups influenced by Claude Shannon and John Backus. He subsequently held faculty positions at Columbia University and visiting roles at École Normale Supérieure, University of California, Berkeley, and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. Over decades he worked alongside scholars affiliated with IBM Research, Microsoft Research, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and the Institute for Advanced Study, contributing to program committees for conferences like STOC, FOCS, ICALP, and SODA.

Yannakakis made seminal contributions to computational complexity theory, notably results on the hardness of approximation for various NP-hard problems and structural aspects of NP versus co-NP. He investigated polyhedral methods connected to the traveling salesman problem and gave influential lower bounds on the extension complexity of polytopes related to linear programming formulations, engaging with concepts seen in work at ETH Zurich and Princeton University. In database theory he developed complexity analyses for query evaluation and connections to the constraint satisfaction problem, drawing links to research at Carnegie Mellon University and University of Toronto. Yannakakis also advanced algorithmic verification via contributions to model checking and temporal logic and influenced developments in probabilistic databases and graph algorithms. His collaborations spanned researchers from Cornell University, Harvard University, Yale University, and University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, and intersected with topics in approximation algorithms, randomized algorithms, and property testing.

Yannakakis has been honored with multiple distinctions including the Gödel Prize for work on complexity and approximation, the Knuth Prize for contributions to algorithms and theory, and fellowship in organizations such as the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He has received honorary appointments and invited lectureships from establishments including the Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences (United States), and the European Research Council. Conferences such as ICALP, STOC, and FOCS have organized special sessions and festschrifts recognizing his influence, and he has been awarded lifetime achievement accolades by societies like the SIAM and the Simons Foundation.

- "The Complexity of the Maximum Subgraph Problem" — contributions published in venues alongside work by Richard Karp and Michael Garey discussing NP-completeness and approximation algorithms. - "Expressing Combinatorial Optimization Problems as Integer Programs" — research influencing topics at INRIA and presented in journals read by scholars at ETH Zurich and University of Cambridge (UK). - "Lower Bounds for Linear Programming Formulations" — papers that stimulated follow-up by teams at Princeton University, MIT, and Microsoft Research on polyhedral complexity. - "Algorithms for Constraint Satisfaction Problems" — work tying together results from groups at Carnegie Mellon University, University of Washington, and University of California, San Diego on CSP tractability. - Selected conference papers in STOC, FOCS, SODA, and ICALP that have been widely cited by researchers at Columbia University, Cornell University, Harvard University, and Yale University.