Zongchen Chen wins the 2022 ACO Outstanding Student Prize

We are delighted to announce the winners of the ACO Outstanding Student Prize for 2022! The selection committee consisting of Prof. Santanu Dey (chair), Prof. Josephine Yu and Prof. Sahil Singla decided that the quality of nominations was so high that it was suitable to give out three awards. Hearty Congratulations to the winners!!

Zongchen Chen wins the 2022 ACO Outstanding Student Prize!

The ACO Outstanding Student Prize is presented to Zongchen Chen for the quality and breadth of their scientific contributions as a Ph.D. student. Chen obtained their PhD in 2021, supervised by Eric Vigoda. This prize recognizes Chen's research on the convergence of Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods in Statistical Physics and on showing the wide applicability of the spectral independence technique to solve major open problems in the area.

Tim Duff wins an honorable mention for the 2022 ACO outstanding student prize.

Tim Duff is awarded an honorable mention for the ACO outstanding student prize for their research contributions in nonlinear algebra and computer vision. Duff obtained their PhD in 2021, supervised by Anton Leykin. Duff is recognized for developing novel monodromy-based methods for solving systems of polynomial equations and for building fast solvers of minimal problems in 3D reconstruction.

Samantha Petti wins an honorable mention for the 2022 ACO outstanding student prize.

Samantha Petti is awarded an honorable mention for the ACO outstanding student prize for their research contributions in probability and random graph theory. Petti obtained their PhD in 2020, supervised by Santosh Vempala. Petti is recognized for developing novel families of random graph models that are rich enough to capture many real-world phenomena of interest.

In addition to the above citations, the winners will receive cash prizes.

This is the fifth time the ACO prize is being awarded. The previous four prizes were awarded to:

Daniel Dadush in 2012: http://aco.gatech.edu/news/daniel-dadush-wins-aco-outstanding-student-prize

Luke Postle in 2014: http://aco.gatech.edu/news/luke-postle-wins-aco-outstanding-student-prize

Chun-Hung Liu in 2018: https://aco.gatech.edu/news/chun-hung-liu-wins-2018-aco-outstanding-student-prize

Uthaipon (Tao) Tantipongpipat in 2020: https://aco.gatech.edu/news/uthaipon-tao-tantipongpipat-wins-2020-aco-outstanding-student-prize