Noam Nisan ( he, נעם ניסן; born June 20, 1961) is an Israeli

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 ...

, a professor of computer science at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

. He is known for his research in

computational complexity theory In theoretical computer science and mathematics, computational complexity theory focuses on classifying computational problems according to their resource usage, and relating these classes to each other. A computational problem is a task solved ...

and

algorithmic game theory Algorithmic game theory (AGT) is an area in the intersection of game theory and computer science, with the objective of understanding and design of algorithms in strategic environments. Typically, in Algorithmic Game Theory problems, the input to ...

Biography

Nisan did his undergraduate studies at the Hebrew University, graduating in 1984. He went to the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

for graduate school, and received a Ph.D. in 1988 under the supervision of

Richard Karp Richard Manning Karp (born January 3, 1935) is an American computer scientist and computational theorist at the University of California, Berkeley. He is most notable for his research in the theory of algorithms, for which he received a Turing ...

. After postdoctoral studies at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

he joined the Hebrew University faculty in 1990.Curriculum vitae
retrieved 2012-03-01.

Selected publications

Nisan is the author of
Using Hard Problems to Create Pseudorandom Generators
' (

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publ ...

, ACM Distinguished Dissertation Series, 1992), co-author with Eyal Kushilevitz of the book
Communication Complexity
' (

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pr ...

, 1997), and co-author with Shimon Schocken of
The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
' (The MIT Press, 2005). In 2007 he co-edited the book
Algorithmic Game Theory
' (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He has written highly cited papers on mechanism design,. combinatorial auctions, the

computational complexity In computer science, the computational complexity or simply complexity of an algorithm is the amount of resources required to run it. Particular focus is given to computation time (generally measured by the number of needed elementary operations) ...

pseudorandom number generator A pseudorandom number generator (PRNG), also known as a deterministic random bit generator (DRBG), is an algorithm for generating a sequence of numbers whose properties approximate the properties of sequences of random numbers. The PRNG-generate ...

s, and interactive proof systems, among other topics.

Awards and honors

Nisan won an ACM Distinguished Dissertation Award for his Ph.D. thesis, on

s. He won the Michael Bruno Memorial Award in 2004. In 2012 he won the

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interes ...

, shared with five other recipients, for his work with Amir Ronen in which he coined the phrase "algorithmic mechanism design" and presented many applications of this type of problem within computer science. He won the Knuth Prize in 2016 "for fundamental and lasting contributions to theoretical computer science in areas including communication complexity, pseudorandom number generators, interactive proofs, and algorithmic game theory". In 2018 he won the

Rothschild Prize Yad Hanadiv (The Rothschild Foundation) is a Rothschild family philanthropic foundation in Israel. Goals and objectives Yad Hanadiv defines its mission as: Dedicated to creating resources for advancing Israel as a healthy, vibrant, democratic s ...

and th
EATCS Award
for "his decisive influence on a range of areas in computational complexity theory and for algorithmic mechanism design, an elegant and rigorous computational theory that aptly informs economics".

References

External links

Home page
at the Hebrew University
Citations
on Google Scholar {{DEFAULTSORT:Nisan, Noam 1961 births Living people Israeli computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists Hebrew University of Jerusalem alumni University of California, Berkeley alumni Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty Gödel Prize laureates Knuth Prize laureates