Sandy Irani

Sandy Irani is a Full Professor at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in the Department of Computer Science within the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. She received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1991 and has been at UCI since 1992. Her research focuses on algorithm design, computational complexity theory, and quantum computing, with notable contributions to online algorithms and quantum complexity theory. She currently serves as Associate Director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley, a role she has held since 2022. This position allows her to collaborate with researchers across theoretical computer science and related disciplines.

Irani’s teaching excellence is recognized through the UCI Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching (2021), and she has contributed to education through her zyBook on Discrete Mathematics, used by over 94,000 students globally. Her work bridges foundational computer science with practical applications, including power management strategies and distributed computing algorithms. Notably, she has collaborated with industry leaders like Mike Luby on optimizing distributed systems.

Her research in quantum computing explores computational problems inspired by condensed matter physics, aiming to understand quantum advantage over classical systems. She has also authored influential papers on topics like cache hierarchy design, scheduling algorithms, and the theoretical limits of electronic structure calculations.

• Awards: ACM Fellow (2022), UCI Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching (2021).
• Key Roles: Associate Director, Simons Institute; Vice Chair, Computing Division at UCI.
• Recent Projects: Quantum algorithms for condensed matter systems, maximal independent set algorithms in distributed networks.