For Shayan Oveis Gharan, research has always been a struggle: “It has a lot of ups and downs, mostly downs. You always think, ‘Can I ever come up with something that doesn’t fail?’” He’s now a IMU Abacus Medal winner. www.quantamagazine.org/shayan-oveis...

Huge congratulations to Shayan Oveis Gharan for receiving the 2026 Abacus Medal (formerly Nevanlinna Prize). The first given to an Iranian! mathunion.org/imu-awards/i...

Congratulations to my Ph.D. student Sam Boardman, co-advised with Prof. Martin Strauss, for successfully completing and defending his dissertation entitled "Combinatorial Optimization Problems Arising from Graph-Based Models." Congratulations, Dr. Boardman! It's been a fun few years seeing you grow!

Very proud of my awesome student Nikhil Shagrithaya @nikhilshagri.bsky.social for successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis! This is a culmination of great work on challenging core questions in coding theory. Nikhil's research has been published in top CS venues, including FOCS and STOC conferences.

"Acker lost to no small extent because the entire Board of Regents has been deeply unpopular on campus, so much so that the Faculty Senate took the unprecedented step of formally censuring the lot of them in the fall of 2024...."

No, This Michigan Regent Wasn’t Defeated by Antisemitism

Jordan Acker’s failure was about real politics, not identity politics.

chronicle.com

So Australia is now revoking *existing* tourist visas from Iranian nationals, sending a strong message they're not welcome here. This isn't just insane and objectionable, but also shortsighted. I already have been contacted by academics from North America about our int'l image. Not in a good way.

Good choice! I wish they had also included Peter Shor in this year's award. Quantum computation and information wouldn't be nearly as popular or advanced as it is today without his amazing contributions.

Association for Computing Machinery@acm.org · 5mo ago

Congratulations to Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard on receiving the 2025 ACM A.M. Turing Award! They are recognized for their essential role in establishing the foundations of quantum information science and transforming secure communication and computing. awards.acm.org/turing @umontreal

If you are an elected official that opposes military strikes on Iran, the head of CBS News will clap back at you. Will be interesting to see if she does this for other objectors, or just Muslim politicians, but it does raise the question how much her views of the Middle East shape the news.

onion person@junlper.beer · 5mo ago

she’s such a willing propagandist it’s disgusting

Related to this, Nature considers the University of Michigan the #4 in the US: www.nature.com/nature-index...

𝖬𝖺𝗁𝖽𝗂 𝖢𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖺𝗀𝗁𝖼𝗁𝗂@mahdi.ch · 5mo ago

Time ranks the University of Michigan #9 in the world and the #1 public university in the US! time.com/7358185/top-...

Very exciting: The IEEE ITW 2026 is happening in Arizona in November, after being held outside the US over the past two decades! This year's conference is organized under the phenomenal leadership of general co-chairs Oliver Kosut, Lalitha Sankar, and Bane Vasić. 2026.ieee-itw.org

Time ranks the University of Michigan #9 in the world and the #1 public university in the US! time.com/7358185/top-...

Purdue's actions are disgusting. Time to boycott until they explicitly announce a stop to this nonsense.

Dag.@3fecta.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Perdue banning all Chinese students just for national origin. No other reason. The Harper's Letter crowd must be crafting a humdinger of a new letter over this one. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Quantum mechanics is controversial.

David Lawrance@dplawrance.bsky.social · 5mo ago

And at the UT system: www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

Congratulations to our colleague John Wright, who has received a 2026 Sloan Fellowship! chemistry.berkeley.edu/news/seven-u...

Henry Yuen went into computer science to design video games, but he ended up studying the theoretical foundations of quantum computing. "Looking back, I couldn't have predicted any of the twists and turns that my interests have taken," he said.

A New Complexity Theory for the Quantum Age | Quanta Magazine

Henry Yuen is developing a new mathematical language to describe problems whose inputs and outputs aren’t ordinary numbers.

quantamagazine.org

A whopping 13 papers by the @umich.edu CS theory group accepted to STOC 2026 (>6% of all papers)! Including 3 papers by my two amazing PhD students Nikhil Shagrithaya @nikhilshagri.bsky.social (looking for postdocs, hire him!) and Yeyuan Chen. Go Blue! acm-stoc.org/stoc2026/acc...

New SIGACT award expository work, created in memory of Luca Trevisan: "intended to promote and recognize high-impact work expositing ideas and results from the Theory of Computation." A wonderful initiative—consider nominating people! ⏰ Nomination deadline: April 10 sigact.org/prizes/trevi...

Virtually ALL tech companies have NO chat/phone customer support (or barely ANY customer support at all). This should be made illegal.

Looks like an incredible textbook. I've always admired Watson's precision and clarity of presentation.

Lance Fortnow@lance.fortnow.com · 6mo ago

Thomas Watson has a new computational complexity textbook about to be published by Cambridge University Press. There's a free version online for personal use. complexityincs.com

Rasool Jalili, a former president of Sharif Univ, is now sanctioned by the EU for abusing his academic role "for serious human rights violations in Iran." Once again, he has tainted the reputation of Sharif & has effectively destroyed his own academic career. www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/pre...

The ISIT 2026 conference announces that papers with a co-author who resides in Iran can ask for a short extension of the submission deadline. Please spread the word and help your Iranian colleagues contact the organizers. www.itsoc.org/news/isit-20...

Thrilled and humbled to announce

In the latest In this episode of our Polylogues web series, Simons Institute Founding Associate Director Alistair Sinclair interviews newly appointed Institute Director Venkatesan Guruswami. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY37...

Venkatesan Guruswami | Polylogues

YouTube video by Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing

youtube.com

Finally a candidate for U-Mich Regent who fights for civil rights and isn’t in it just for power and financial advantage. Vote Amir Makled.

Attorney fighting University of Michigan’s Palestine protest crackdowns now running for regent

Campaign efforts are underway for Amir Makled, who wants the University of Michigan to remain “a true public university” in both name and practice.

mlive.com

The info and slides of the 18 🎓 "Graduating Bits" participants are now available on the website! Look at them, hire them! focs.computer.org/2025/graduat...

Best category of FOCS awards 👌😅

FOCS 2026@focs2026.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Winners of the #FOCS2025 Cartoon Caption Contest: - "This guy is about to blow up the polynomial hierarchy." [ Rachel Zhang ] - "Not exactly what I meant by 'increase FOCS acceptance rate.'" [ @mahdi.ch ]

Kicking off the first day of the main conference with proper caffeination! #FOCS2025

Absolutely disgusting and (currently) illegal move by Purdue University, banning ALL graduate students from China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea. Purdue faculty need to protest to stop this immediately. Fun fact: Purdue's President is Chinese. www.purdueexponent.org/campus/featu...

Purdue reportedly directs admissions to reject students from list of 'dangerous countries'

Admissions departments in the schools of engineering, college of liberal arts, and science have reportedly been directed not to accept students from certain countries. This directive comes after a let...

purdueexponent.org

The inaugural Computational Complexity Conference Test of Time Award seeks nominations (deadline Monday, March 2, 2026). Help us select an awesome paper for this award! computationalcomplexity.org/tot/tot26.html

“This report underscore[s] how the Civil Rights Act of 1964—which passed in response to years of nonviolent civil disobedience against racial injustice—is being misused to squash political dissent & speech that advocates for the human rights of Palestinians.” — Veena Dubal, AAUP General Counsel

Most Campus 'Antisemitism' Probes Target Criticism of Israel, Not Anti-Jewish Hate: Report | Common Dreams

A new report details how, under both Biden and Trump, pro-Israel groups silenced criticism of Israel on US campuses, equating it with antisemitism.

commondreams.org