Lap Chi Lau, associate professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, has been named a 2016 Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher.
Conferred by CS-Can/Info-Can, these prestigious awards recognize young computer science faculty members at Canadian universities who have received their PhD within the past 10 years and made highly significant contributions in their careers, particularly to research.
“I’m delighted that Professor Lap Chi Lau has been awarded an Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher Prize,” said Mark Giesbrecht, director of the Cheriton School of Computer Science. “Lap Chi joins Kate Larson, Ondřej Lhoták, Ian Goldberg and Bin Ma in a growing list of distinguished young faculty members at our school who have won this prize.”
Lau’s research explores algorithmic graph theory, approximation algorithms and combinatorial optimization. He studies different approaches to solve graph problems and new connections between them. His contributions span designing good approximation algorithms and fast exact algorithms for graph problems to incorporating ideas from linear algebra, probability and combinatorial optimization.
The Outstanding Young Computer Science Researcher awards will be presented during the banquet at the annual Computer Science chairs meeting on May 15, 2017 at the University of Alberta.