Name Mohammad Hajiaghayi | Fields Computer Science | |
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Institutions University of Maryland, College Park Doctoral students Rajesh Chitnis, Vahid Liaghat, Reza Khani, Anshul Sawant. Notable awards EATCS Nerode Prize (2015)
ONR Young Investigator Award (2011)
NSF CAREER Award (2010) Institution University of Maryland, College Park Alma mater Sharif University of Technology, University of Waterloo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Doctoral advisor Erik Demaine, F. Thomson Leighton | ||
Mohammad Taghi Hajiaghayi (Persian: محمد تقی حاجی آقائی; born in 1979) is a computer scientist known for his work in algorithms, game theory, social networks, network design, graph theory, and big data. More specifically he has designed numerous algorithms and taught classes in the areas of approximation algorithms, fixed-parameter algorithms, algorithmic game theory, algorithmic graph theory, online algorithms, and streaming algorithms. He has over 200 publications with over 185 collaborators and 10 issued patents.
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He is currently the Jack and Rita G. Minker (full) Professor at the University of Maryland Department of Computer Science.
Early life
Mohammad Hajiaghayi was born in 1979 in Qazvin, Iran. His parents were both K-12 teachers. He went to high school at Shahid Babaee High School (Qazvin Sampad), National Organization for Development of Exceptional Talents (NODET).
In 1997, Hajiaghayi won a silver medal in the International Olympiad in Informatics.
Professional career
Hajiaghayi received his BSc with highest distinction in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2000 (in three years), his MSc in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in 2001, and his PhD in applied mathematics and computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005 advised by Erik Demaine and F. Thomson Leighton.
His thesis was titled "The Bidimensionality Theory and Its Algorithmic Applications" founded the theory of bidimensionality which later received the Nerode Prize and was subject of studies in a few workshops.
He was a post-doc at the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science and MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory as well as a researcher at AT&T Labs—Research.
Hajiaghayi was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Maryland in the Fall of 2010. He was promoted to an associate professor with tenure in 2012 and then to a full professor in 2016. He has served on the program committees of numerous conferences as well as editorial boards of several journals.
Hajiaghayi has been the coach of the University of Maryland ACM International Collegiate Programming team in The World Finals.
In 2014, Hajiaghayi along with Seddighin introduced a new CS Theory Ranking based on publications in theory conferences.
Honors and awards
Hajiaghayi's has received National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2010), Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2011), University of Maryland Graduate Faculty Mentor of the Year Award (2015), as well as Google Faculty Research Awards (2010 & 2014). So far Hajiaghayi has raised more than 3.4 million dollars in terms of grant award money from government and industry since joining the University of Maryland.
With his co-authors Erik Demaine, Fedor Fomin, and Dimitrios Thilikos, he received the 2015 European Association for Theoretical Computer Science Nerode Prize for his work (also the topic of his Ph.D. thesis) on bidimensionality, a general technique for developing both fixed-parameter tractable exact algorithms and approximation algorithms for a wide class of algorithmic problems on graphs.