Lila Fontes

Lila Fontes is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Swarthmore College. She holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. from the University of Toronto (supervised by Stephen Cook and Toniann Pitassi) and a B.A. in Mathematics from Harvard University (supervised by Peter Koellner). Her research focuses on theoretical computer science, particularly privacy, communication complexity, and algorithm design, exploring trade-offs between privacy and computational efficiency.

She teaches courses such as Data Structures and Algorithms, Theory of Computation, and Algorithms. Notable publications include works on communication complexity, privacy-preserving algorithms, and lower bounds analysis. Fontes has received awards including the Best Student Paper Award (PEARC 2023) and Best Paper Award (SIROCCO 2023). She actively serves on academic committees, including the College Judiciary Committee and faculty hiring committees.