Prof. Kamesh Munagala with grad student student Sayan Bhattacharya (left)

With great pleasure, Duke University announces the promotion of Kamesh Munagala to Associate Professor of Computer Science, effective January 1, 2011.

After completing a PhD in Computer Science at Stanford University and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Biochemistry, Munagala joined the Duke faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2004, and has been making his mark ever since. In 2008, Munagala won a prestigious National Science Foundation Early CAREER Award followed by an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2009.

"Kamesh is a widely recognized star in the important theoretical area of approximation algorithms," says Department Chair Carlo Tomasi. ""He is respected and loved by faculty and students alike, who benefit from his sharp and insightful advice. We are very fortunate to have him among us."

An avid researcher, Munagala studies approximation algorithms -- provable techniques to circumvent intractability of computational problems commonly arising in computing and communication systems. His lab applies such algorithms and models to databases, computer and sensor networks, and e-commerce, in order to simplify complex problems. In April 2008, Munagala received the Best Paper Award at the 18th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW) for Hybrid Keyword Search Auctions, a publication written with Ashish Goel of Stanford University.

Munagala collaborates with researchers in ecology and statistics at Duke, as well as Professors Pankaj Agarwal, Shivnath Babu, Romit Roy Choudhury, Vince Conitzer, and Jun Yang on algorithms for databases, e-commerce, and wireless network applications.

"I like that aspect of Duke," says Munagala. "It's easy to collaborate." But perhaps best of all, he adds, are the students he interacts with everyday. "We get very good students," says Munagala. "It makes a huge difference."