Charles E. Leiserson

Charles E. Leiserson is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT, holding the Edwin Sibley Webster Professorship in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He leads the Supertech Research Group and is Faculty Director of the MIT-Air Force AI Accelerator. His work focuses on parallel computing, performance engineering, and algorithms. Leiserson is renowned for co-authoring the foundational textbook Introduction to Algorithms, widely used in computer science education globally. He has pioneered technologies like the Cilk multithreaded programming language and contributed to supercomputing architectures such as the Connection Machine CM-5. His research bridges theoretical computer science with practical applications, emphasizing cache-oblivious algorithms and compiler optimizations. Leiserson has received multiple awards for his academic contributions and educational impact, including the ACM-IEEE Ken Kennedy Award and Margaret MacVicar Fellow distinction at MIT.

Education:

• B.S., Yale University, 1975
• Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, 1981

Research Interests: Leiserson’s work addresses performance engineering challenges in post-Moore’s Law computing. His group develops algorithms, software systems, and hardware strategies for scalable parallelism. Key areas include parallel programming frameworks (e.g., OpenCilk), cache-aware algorithms, and compiler optimizations. He emphasizes making parallel computing accessible to mainstream programmers through tools like Cilk and educational initiatives such as MIT’s Software Performance Engineering course.

Projects & Leadership: Leiserson leads the Supertech Research Group and contributed to the Cilk Arts Inc. venture, acquired by Intel. He chairs the MIT Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program (UPOP) and teaches courses on algorithms and discrete mathematics. His leadership workshops for faculty have educated hundreds worldwide on team management in academia.

Awards & Recognition:

• 2014 ACM-IEEE Ken Kennedy Award
• IEEE Taylor L. Booth Education Award
• ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award
• Member of the National Academy of Engineering

Labs & Teams: Active in MIT’s CSAIL, Leiserson collaborates through the Supertech Group and Theory of Computation communities. His current projects include Tapir compiler infrastructure, graph neural network applications for anti-money laundering, and deterministic parallel scheduling algorithms.