Mihai Pătrașcu (17 July 1982 – 5 June 2012) was a

Romanian-American Romanian Americans are Americans who have Romanian ancestry. According to the 2017 American Community Survey, 478,278 Americans indicated Romanian as their first or second ancestry, however other sources provide higher estimates, which are mos ...

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 (al ...

at AT&T Labs in Florham Park, New Jersey, USA. Pătrașcu attended Carol I National College in

Craiova Craiova (, also , ), is Romania's 6th Cities in Romania, largest city and capital of Dolj County, and situated near the east bank of the river Jiu River, Jiu in central Oltenia. It is a longstanding political center, and is located at approximatel ...

. As a high school student, he won 2 gold medals and 1 silver medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies in Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completing his thesis under the supervision of Erik Demaine in 2008. Pătrașcu’s work was concerned with fundamental questions about basic

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, a ...

s. Pătrașcu received the Machtey Award for the best student paper at the

Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science The IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) is an academic conference in the field of theoretical computer science. FOCS is sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. As writes, FOCS and its annual Association for Computing ...

in 2008, and the Presburger Award from the

European Association for Theoretical Computer Science The European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) is an international organization with a European focus, founded in 1972. Its aim is to facilitate the exchange of ideas and results among theoretical computer scientists as well as ...

in 2012, for breaking "many old barriers on fundamental data structure problems, not only revitalizing but also revolutionizing a field that was almost silent for over a decade." Pătrașcu died in 2012 after suffering from

brain cancer A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and secondar ...

for a year and a half, and was buried in his native city.

Selected publications

* Preliminary version published in FOCS 2008, . * * * Preliminary version published in FOCS 2006, . * Preliminary version published in FOCS 2004, . See Tango tree. *

References

External links

Pătrașcu’s blog WebDiarios de Motocicleta

Mihai Pătrașcu Memorial
* 1982 births 2012 deaths People from Craiova Carol I National College alumni Romanian emigrants to the United States MIT School of Engineering alumni Romanian computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists Researchers in geometric algorithms Competitive programmers AT&T people Deaths from brain cancer in the United States {{Romania-scientist-stub