Dennis Elliot Shasha is an American professor of

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

at the

Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences The Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences (commonly known as Courant or CIMS) is the mathematics research school of New York University (NYU). Founded in 1935, it is named after Richard Courant, one of the founders of the Courant Institute ...

, a division of

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

. He is also an associate director of NYU WIRELESS. His current areas of research include work done with biologists on pattern discovery for

microarrays A microarray is a multiplex lab-on-a-chip. Its purpose is to simultaneously detect the expression of thousands of biological interactions. It is a two-dimensional array on a solid substrate—usually a glass slide or silicon thin-film cell� ...

combinatorial design Combinatorial design theory is the part of combinatorial mathematics that deals with the existence, construction and properties of systems of finite sets whose arrangements satisfy generalized concepts of ''balance'' and/or ''symmetry''. These co ...

, network inference, and

protein docking Macromolecular docking is the computational modelling of the quaternary structure of complexes formed by two or more interacting biological macromolecules. Protein–protein complexes are the most commonly attempted targets of such modelling, foll ...

; work done with physicists, musicians, and professionals in finance on algorithms for

time series In mathematics, a time series is a series of data points indexed (or listed or graphed) in time order. Most commonly, a time series is a sequence taken at successive equally spaced points in time. Thus it is a sequence of discrete-time data. ...

; and work on database applications in untrusted environments. Other areas of interest include

database tuning Database tuning describes a group of activities used to optimize and homogenize the performance of a database. It usually overlaps with query tuning, but refers to design of the database files, selection of the database management system (DBMS) ...

as well as tree and graph matching.

Background

After graduating from

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

in 1977, he worked for

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

designing circuits and

microcode In processor design, microcode serves as an intermediary layer situated between the central processing unit (CPU) hardware and the programmer-visible instruction set architecture of a computer. It consists of a set of hardware-level instructions ...

for the IBM 3090. While at IBM, he earned his M.Sc. from

Syracuse University Syracuse University (informally 'Cuse or SU) is a Private university, private research university in Syracuse, New York, United States. It was established in 1870 with roots in the Methodist Episcopal Church but has been nonsectarian since 1920 ...

in 1980. He completed his Ph.D. in applied mathematics at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

in 1984 (thesis advisor: Nat Goodman). Professor Shasha is a prolific author, researcher, tango dancer, climber, and public speaker. He has written six books of puzzles, five of which center on the work of a mathematical detective by the name of Jacob Ecco, a biography about great computer scientists (coauthored by freelance journalist Cathy Lazere), and technical books relating to his various areas of research. In his non-academic writings, perhaps his greatest invention is the notion of omniheuristics, a kind of super-

heuristics A heuristic or heuristic technique (''problem solving'', '' mental shortcut'', ''rule of thumb'') is any approach to problem solving that employs a pragmatic method that is not fully optimized, perfected, or rationalized, but is nevertheless ...

concerned with the ability to solve any and all manner of

puzzles A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together ( or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to find the solution of the puzzle. There are different ...

, conundrums, enigmas, and dilemmas. Owing their decidedly curious character, he has given particular note to puzzles that start off easy, but have apparently innocent variants that are particularly perplexing; he calls them 'upstarts'. Professor Shasha has written monthly puzzle columns for ''

Communications of the ACM ''Communications of the ACM'' (''CACM'') is the monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). History It was established in 1958, with Saul Rosen as its first managing editor. It is sent to all ACM members. Articles are i ...

'', ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...

'', and ''

Dr. Dobb's Journal ''Dr. Dobb's Journal'' (often shortened to ''Dr. Dobb's'' or DDJ) was a monthly magazine published in the United States by UBM Technology Group, part of UBM. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. When launched in 1976, DDJ was the fi ...

''. He lives in New York with his wife Karen. In 2013 he became a

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

Bibliography

Dr. Ecco mysteries

* ''The Puzzling Adventures of Dr. Ecco'' - (1988, Freeman, and republished in 1998 by Dover) * ''Codes, Puzzles, and Conspiracy'' - (1992, Freeman, republished in 2004 by Dover as ''Dr. Ecco: Mathematical Detective'') * ''Dr. Ecco's Cyberpuzzles'' - (2002, W. W. Norton) * ''Puzzling Adventures'' - (2005, W. W. Norton) * ''The Puzzler's Elusion'' - (2006, Avalon Publishing) * ''Puzzles for Programmers and Pros'' - (2007, Wrox)

Computer science

* ''Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists'' - (1998, Springer) * ''Database Tuning: Principles, Experiments, and Troubleshooting Techniques'' - (2002,

Morgan Kaufmann Morgan Kaufmann Publishers is a Burlington, Massachusetts (San Francisco, California until 2008) based publisher specializing in computer science and engineering content. Since 1984, Morgan Kaufmann has been publishing contents on information te ...

) * ''High Performance Discovery in Time Series: techniques and case studies'' - (2004,

Springer Verlag Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 in ...

) * ''Natural Computing: DNA, Quantum Bits, and the Future of Smart Machines'' - (2010, W. W. Norton) * ''Statistics is Easy: Case Studies on Real Scientific Datasets'' - (2021, Morgan Claypool) * ''Automated Verification of Concurrent Search Structures'' - (2021, Morgan Claypool)

Historical

* ''Red Blues: Voices from the Last Wave of Russian Immigrants'' - (Holmes & Meier, 2002) * ''Iraq's Last Jews: Stories of Daily Life, Upheaval, and Escape from Modern Babylon'' - (2008, Palgrave Macmillan)

References

External links

Dennis Shasha at the Mathematics Genealogy Project

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shasha, Dennis American computer scientists Recreational mathematicians Mathematics popularizers Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni Living people Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences faculty Scientists from New York City Yale University alumni 2013 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Year of birth missing (living people)