Steven Skiena, distinguished teaching professor of Computer Science and director of the AI Institute for AI-Driven Discovery and Innovation at Stony Brook University, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award for the 2022-23 academic year.
Skiena will join the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, where he will continue his research collaboration with Arnout van de Rijit, a former sociology professor at Stony Brook. His research project is “Word/Graph Embeddings in the Social Sciences.”
Skiena said he hopes to “come back with new friends, new ideas, new enthusiasm, and maybe a new book.”
“I had been planning my sabbatical year for quite some time, and this was the news that settled everything for us,” Skiena said.
“I want our students to know that their faculty are not half-bright — we are Fulbright.”
“The department will miss Steve for one whole year. But we look forward to hearing about his discoveries,” added Samir Das, chair of the Department of Computer Science.
Skiena’s research interests include the design of graph, string and geometric algorithms, and their applications. His Data Science Laboratory studies large-scale text analytics and sentiment analysis. He is the author of six books, including The Algorithm Design Manual and Calculated Bets: Computers, Gambling, and Mathematical Modeling to Win.
Skiena, who received his PhD in computer science from the University of Illinois in 1988, is a recipient of the ONR Young Investigator Award, a Chancellor’s Award for Teaching and the IEEE Computer Science and Engineer Teaching Award. This is Skiena’s second Fulbright award; in 2001-02 he went to Haifa University in Israel for his project, “Investigations in String Algorithmics and Computational Biology.”
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to forge lasting connections between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Since its establishment in 1946, the Fulbright Program has enabled more than 390,000 dedicated and accomplished students, scholars, artists, teachers, and professionals of all backgrounds to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas, and find solutions to shared international concerns. The Fulbright Program is funded through an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State.
The Fulbright Scholar Program for academics and professionals awards more than 1,700 fellowships each year, enabling 800 U.S. Scholars to go abroad and 900 Visiting Scholars to come to the United States. Fulbright alumni include 61 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 76 MacArthur Fellows, and world-renowned experts in many fields across the private, public, and non-profit sectors.
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