SHINING STARS 2000

CMU Professor Wins Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award

Danny Sleator of CSD and Bob Tarjan of Princeton University have been awarded the 1999 Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award by the ACM for their invention of the Splay Tree data structure. This prestigious award "honors specific theoretical accomplishments that have had a significant and demonstrable effect on the practice of computing." Along with the honor comes a $5000 prize.

Splay Trees are a simple, elegant, and efficient self-adjusting data structure for storing ordered sets. They've found their way into the Linux and NT kernels, the GCC compiler, FORE routers, and a myriad of other important applications. CMU is still basking in the glow of last year's Kanellakis Award, which was given to Randy Bryant, Ed Clarke, and Ken McMillan (PhD alumnus), and E. Allen Emerson of the University of Texas for their work on symbolic model checking.