Steven Rudich (born October 4, 1961) is a professor in the

Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science The School of Computer Science (SCS) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US is a school for computer science established in 1988. It has been consistently ranked among the top computer science programs over the decades. ...

. In 1994, he and

Alexander Razborov Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Razborov (russian: Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Разбо́ров; born February 16, 1963), sometimes known as Sasha Razborov, is a Soviet and Russian mathematician and computational theorist. He is ...

proved that a large class of combinatorial arguments, dubbed

natural proof In computational complexity theory, a natural proof is a certain kind of proof establishing that one complexity class differs from another one. While these proofs are in some sense "natural", it can be shown (assuming a widely believed conjecture o ...

s, was unlikely to answer many of the important problems 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 ...

. For this work, they were awarded 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 ...

in 2007. He also co-authored a paper demonstrating that all currently known

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 ...

problems remain NP-complete even under AC⁰ or NC⁰ reductions. Amongst

Carnegie Mellon Carnegie may refer to: People *Carnegie (surname), including a list of people with the name *Clan Carnegie, a lowland Scottish clan Institutions Named for Andrew Carnegie * Carnegie Building (Troy, New York), on the campus of Rensselaer Polyte ...

students, he is best known as the teacher of the class "Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science" (formerly named "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist"), often considered one of the most difficult classes in the undergraduate computer science curriculum. He is an editor of the ''

Journal of Cryptology The ''Journal of Cryptology'' () is a scientific journal in the field of cryptology and cryptography. The journal is published quarterly by the International Association for Cryptologic Research. Its editor-in-chief is Vincent Rijmen Vincent ...

'', as well as an accomplished magician. His

Erdős number The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individual ...

is 2.Oakland.edu
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Leap@CMU

Rudich (and Merrick Furst, now a Distinguished Professor at the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part ...

) began the Leap@CMU (formerly called Andrew's Leap) summer enrichment program for high school (and occasionally, middle school) students in 1991. The summer enrichment program focuses mainly on theoretical aspects of Computer Science in the morning, followed by lunch recess, and then an elective—Robotics, Programming, or Mathematics Theory. The Programming elective is broken down into Intro Programming, Intermediate Programming, and Advanced Programming. As of 2017, the Math Theory Elective has been removed. Most days, there is also an afternoon lecture by a Carnegie Mellon University faculty member. This is placed between lunch and electives. To enroll in Andrew's Leap, one must take a specialized test known as The Interesting Test. This assessment is supposed to gauge ability to think outside the box, and aptitude for computer-related math. Performance in school is not taken into account when deciding who is ready to take the course. As of summer 2018, this program has been discontinued.

References

External links

Andrew's Leap Homepage

Andrew's Leap Blog
*.
Home page at Carnegie Mellon
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rudich, Steven American computer scientists Carnegie Mellon University faculty 1961 births Living people Gödel Prize laureates