Erik Demaine

By Erik J. Larson, PhD

Demaine is a professor of computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His university education is extraordinary, because Demaine was a child prodigy. He completed his bachelor’s degree at Dalhousie University at age 14. By 20, he had completed his Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo. His dissertation on computational origami won Canada’s national prize for the best Ph.D. thesis in Canada in 2003.

Demaine’s research at MIT focuses on fundamental theory in computation as well as applications of mathematics in computer science and artificial intelligence research. He was the youngest professor ever hired by MIT when he joined them in 2001, becoming a full professor a decade later in 2011. Demaine was awarded the “genius grant,” the MacArthur Fellowship in 2011, and won the prestigious Nerode Award in 2015 for his work on the theory of algorithms in 2016. He also became a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) the same year.

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