Barna Saha (Ph.D,'11) is a recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship

Barna Saha (Ph.D, '11) has been named to the newest class of Sloan Fellows.  Saha, advised by Professor Samir Khuller, is a theoretical computer scientist who also works on the mathematical foundations of data science. She is an assistant professor of the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Information and Computer Science. "I try to determine the fastest possible algorithms for important optimization problems. I have managed to find significantly faster approximation algorithms for problems including shortest paths in graphs, matrix multiplication over certain algebraic structures, language edit distance and RNA folding," she said. Applications to her work include data cleaning, computing the secondary structure of RNA and genome comparison.  As a Sloan fellow, she will be able to  concentrate on her groundbreaking work--the complexity of approximating fundamental optimization problems. 

In 2017, Saha was a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award. 

For more about Saha's award, read here: https://www.cics.umass.edu/news/saha-awarded-prestigious-sloan-foundation-fellowship