Pothen named 2024 AAAS Fellow
03-27-2025
Alex Pothen, professor of computer science in the College of Science, has been named to the class of 2024 fellows of the American Associate for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Purdue Computer Science Professor Alex Pothen named 2024 AAAS Fellow for contributions to Combinatorial Scientific Computing
Alex Pothen, professor of computer science in Purdue University’s College of Science, has been named a 2024 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This lifetime honor recognizes his distinguished contributions and leadership in the field of combinatorial algorithms for scientific computing.
Pothen’s research focuses on applied and computational discrete algorithms (ACDA), high-performance computing, data science, and bioinformatics algorithms. His work has had a profound impact on the efficiency and scalability of high-performance algorithms influencing both theoretical advances and practical applications. He has designed algorithms for massive graphs in several computational settings, including approximation algorithms, streaming models, and parallel computers. These algorithms compute summaries of large data sets, decompose large problems into smaller subproblems, and identify computations that can be performed independently. His expertise in formulating combinatorial models for problems in computational science has advanced research and practice across multiple domains, including the design of airplanes, monitoring the state of the electrical power grid, routing data traffic in data centers, identifying software security flaws, and recognizing cell types in immunology.
AAAS Fellows are recognized for their contributions to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics through research, teaching, and service. Pothen’s leadership in combinatorial algorithms and his ability to bridge these algorithms with real-world applications reflect the values and mission of AAAS to advance science and serve society.
“I am thankful to the AAAS for this honor, and am grateful to my mentors, students and collaborators over the years," says Pothen. "It has been the blessing of my life to have learned so much by working with them. I am also grateful to colleagues at Purdue for the support I have received from them. “
Pothen has been previously elected as a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the American Mathematical Society (AMS). He has also received the George Pólya prize in Applied Combinatorics from SIAM in recognition of his work on graph coloring algorithms that enable efficient differentiation of functions to solve optimization problems and differential equations.
"Alex's pioneering contributions to combinatorial scientific computing—a field he co-founded—as well as his groundbreaking research in graph algorithms and parallel computing, have significantly advanced computational science," says Petros Drineas, professor and head of the Department of Computer Science. "We are proud to have him represent Purdue Computer Science as an AAAS Fellow."
Pothen’s election to the rank of AAAS Fellow underscores the significance of his contributions to the scientific community and highlights his role as a leader in the field. He will be formally recognized at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., on June 7, 2025, where the 2024 class of Fellows will be recognized.
About the American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science, as well as Science Translational Medicine, Science Signaling, the open-access journal Science Advances, Science Immunology, and Science Robotics. Founded in 1848, AAAS includes more than 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. The nonprofit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more. For additional information about AAAS, visit www.aaas.org.
About the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University
Founded in 1962, the Department of Computer Science was created to be an innovative base of knowledge in the emerging field of computing as the first degree-awarding program in the United States. The department continues to advance the computer science industry through research. US News & Reports ranks Purdue CS #8 in computer engineering and #19 and #16 and #18 overall in undergraduate and graduate computer science, respectively. Additionally the program is ranked 6th in cybersecurity, 8th in software engineering, 13th in systems, 15th in programming languages and data analytics, and 18th in theory. Graduates of the program are able to solve complex and challenging problems in many fields. Our consistent success in an ever-changing landscape is reflected in the record undergraduate enrollment, increased faculty hiring, innovative research projects, and the creation of new academic programs. The increasing centrality of computer science in academic disciplines and society, and new research activities—centered around foundations and applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning, such as natural language processing, human computer interaction, vision, and robotics, as well as systems and security—are the future focus of the department. cs.purdue.edu