Professor Sartaj Kumar Sahni (born July 22, 1949, in

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, ( the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million As of 2021, Pune Metropolitan Region is the largest i ...

, India) is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

based in the United States, and is one of the pioneers in the field of

data structure In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, ...

s. He is a distinguished professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

Education

Sahni received his

BTech A Bachelor of Technology (Latin ''Baccalaureus Technologiae'', commonly abbreviated as B.Tech. or BTech; with honours as B.Tech. (Hons.)) is an undergraduate academic degree conferred after the completion of a three to five-year program of studi ...

degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from the

Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT Kanpur) Hindi: भारतीय प्रौद्योगिकी संस्थान कानपुर) is a public institute of technology located in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. It was ...

. Following this, he undertook his graduate studies at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in the USA, earning a

PhD degree A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in 1973, under the supervision of Ellis Horowitz.

Research and publications

Sahni has published over 280 research papers and written 15 textbooks. His research publications are on the design and analysis of efficient

algorithms In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

data structures In computer science, a data structure is a data organization, management, and storage format that is usually chosen for efficient access to data. More precisely, a data structure is a collection of data values, the relationships among them, ...

parallel computing Parallel computing is a type of computation in which many calculations or processes are carried out simultaneously. Large problems can often be divided into smaller ones, which can then be solved at the same time. There are several different f ...

, interconnection networks, design automation, and medical algorithms. With his advisor Ellis Horowitz, Sahni wrote two widely used textbooks, ''Fundamentals of Computer Algorithms'' and ''Fundamentals of Data Structures''. He has also written highly cited research papers on the

NP-complete In computational complexity theory, a problem is NP-complete when: # it is a problem for which the correctness of each solution can be verified quickly (namely, in polynomial time) and a brute-force search algorithm can find a solution by trying ...

ness of approximately solving certain optimization problems, on open shop scheduling, on

parallel algorithm In computer science, a parallel algorithm, as opposed to a traditional serial algorithm, is an algorithm which can do multiple operations in a given time. It has been a tradition of computer science to describe serial algorithms in abstract machin ...

s for

matrix multiplication In mathematics, particularly in linear algebra, matrix multiplication is a binary operation that produces a matrix from two matrices. For matrix multiplication, the number of columns in the first matrix must be equal to the number of rows in the s ...

and their application in

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of '' graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...

, and on improved exponential time exact algorithms for the subset sum problem, among his many other research results.

Awards and honors

In 1997, Sahni was awarded the

IEEE Computer Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

's Taylor L. Booth Education Award and in 2003 he was awarded the IEEE Computer Society McDowell Award. Sahni was also awarded the 2003 Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award 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 member ...

. Prof. Sahni is a member of the European Academy of Sciences. He was elected as a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

in 1988, and of the

in 1996; he is also a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

, elected in 1995. He is a Distinguished Alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.Distinguished Alumnus Awards-2000
IIT Kanpur, accessed 2011-10-10. Sahni was given the Honorary Professor Award of

Asia University (Taiwan) Asia University (AU; ), formerly Taichung Health and Management College (), is a private university in Taichung, Taiwan. Founded in 2001, it offers education for degrees in health and medical science, computer science and electrical engineering, ...

in 2009.

Volunteer activities

He is serving as editor-in-chief of ACM Computing Surveys.
https://csur.acm.org/editorial.cfm

References

External links

Sartaj K. Sahni home page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sahni, Sartaj 1949 births Living people IIT Kanpur alumni Cornell University alumni Indian computer scientists American computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists Computer science writers Indian emigrants to the United States Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellow Members of the IEEE University of Florida faculty