Wojciech Szpankowski - Biography#

Wojciech Szpankowski is the Saul Rosen Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University where he teaches and conducts research in analysis of algorithms, information theory, analytic combinatorics, random structures, and stability problems of distributed systems. He held several Visiting Professor/Scholar positions, including McGill, INRIA, Stanford, Hewlett-Packard, U de Versailles, U of Canterbury, New Zealand, Ecole Polytechnique, France, the Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK, ETH, Zurich, Hawaii U, and Gdansk U of Technology, Poland. He is a Fellow of IEEE, and the Erskine Fellow. In 2010 he received the Humboldt Research Award and in 2015 the Inaugural Arden L. Bement Jr. Award. In 2020 he was the recipient of the Flajolet Lecture Prize (previous winners include D.E. Knuth, R. Sedgewick, and L. Devroye).

Szpankowski has been delivering keynote/plenary talks in prestigious conferences and symposia including AofA 2007, Facets of Entropy, 2007, LATIN 2008, MathInfo, 2008, PGTS, 2008, ISIT, 2011, Concordia, 2011, PCC, Bedlewo, 2012, WITMSE, 2014, the Helsinki Distinguished Lecture Series, 2014, IS4IS Summit, Vienna 2015, Combinatorial Pattern Matching, Italy, 2015, AofA, Krakow, 2016, WITMSE, 2016, Helsinki, Finland, Knuth 80, Piteaa, 2018, ETH, Zurich, 2018, Texas A&M, 2018, Lancaster University, UK, 2018, SODA, 2019, San Diego, IBM, Watson, 2020.

He is on the scientific boards of Helsinki Institute of Information Technology (HIIT), Helsinki and NeuroMat: Center for Neuromathematics, San Paolo, Brazil.

He published two books: "Average Case Analysis of Algorithms on Sequences", John Wiley & Sons, 2001, and "Analytic Pattern Matching: From DNA to Twitter", Cambridge, 2015. A new monograph (with M. Drmota) on “Analytic Information Theory” will be published in 2022 by Cambridge Press.

In 2010 he was awarded, as PI and Director, the prestigious NSF Science & Technology Center for newly introduced science of information. Funded with $50m, the Center has been developing fundamental principles and analytical approaches to understanding modern and emerging aspects of information beyond the original Shannon meaning. This NSF award is a culmination of Szpankowski’s career-long seminal contributions and a recognition of his pioneering status and scholarly track record in advancing science.

Full CV