The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing announced its first two named professorships, beginning July 1, to Frédo Durand and Samuel Madden in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). These named positions recognize the outstanding achievements and future potential of their academic careers.
“I’m thrilled to acknowledge Frédo and Sam for their outstanding contributions in research and education. These named professorships recognize them for their extraordinary achievements,” says Daniel Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.
Frédo Durand, a professor of computer science and engineering in EECS, has been named the inaugural Amar Bose Professor of Computing. The professorship, named after Amar Bose, former longtime member of the MIT faculty and the founder of Bose Corporation, is granted in recognition of the recipient’s excellence in teaching, research, and mentorship in the field of computing. A member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Durand’s research interests span most aspects of picture generation and creation, including rendering and computational photography. His recent focus includes video magnification for revealing the invisible, differentiable rendering, and compilers for productive high-performance imaging.
He received an inaugural Eurographics Young Researcher Award in 2004; an NSF CAREER Award in 2005; an inaugural Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship in 2005; a Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 2006; a Spira Award for distinguished teaching in 2007; and the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award in 2016.
Samuel Madden has been named the inaugural College of Computing Distinguished Professor of Computing. A professor of electrical engineering and computer science in EECS, Madden is being honored as an outstanding faculty member who is recognized as a leader and innovator. His research is in the area of database systems, focusing on database analytics and query processing, ranging from clouds to sensors to modern high-performance server architectures. He co-directs the Data Systems for AI Lab initiative and the Data Systems Group, investigating issues related to systems and algorithms for data focusing on applying new methodologies for processing data, including applying machine learning methods to data systems and engineering data systems for applying machine learning at scale.
Madden was named one of MIT Technology Review‘s “35 Innovators Under 35” in 2005, and received an NSF CAREER Award in 2004 and a Sloan Foundation Fellowship in 2007. He has also received several best paper awards in VLDB 2004 and 2007 and in MobiCom 2006. In addition, he was recognized with a “test of time” award in SIGMOD 2013 for his work on acquisitional query processing and a 10-year best paper award in VLDB 2015 for his work on the C-Store system.