Gautam Kamath Awarded 2026 Gödel Prize

Gautam Kamath, who will be joining our computer science faculty in the upcoming fall semester, has been awarded the 2026 Gödel Prize from the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM SIGACT).

Presented annually since 1993, the Gödel Prize recognizes outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science. Professor Kamath is honored alongside co-authors Ilias Diakonikolas, Daniel Kane, Jerry Li, Ankur Moitra and Alistair Stewart for their landmark paper "Robust Estimators in High-Dimensions without the Computational Intractability." The Prize is named in honor of Kurt Gödel in recognition of his major contributions to mathematical logic; it is widely regarded as the most prestigious honor in the field of theoretical computer science.

Professor Kamath also received the 2026 Presburger Award from the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science last month. Named in honor of the Polish mathematician Mojżesz Presburger, the prize is awarded annually to "a young scientist for outstanding contributions in theoretical computer science, documented by a published paper or a series of published papers." 

He will join Courant from the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. He also serves as a Faculty Member at the Vector Institute and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair. Professor Kamath’s research interests are in trustworthy algorithms, statistics, and machine learning, particularly focusing on considerations like data privacy and robustness. He received his B.S. from Cornell University and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Kamath leads The Salon, a research group which studies Statistics, Algorithms, Learning, and Optimization. The group will be based in New York University’s Computer Science Department from Fall 2026.