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$150,000 Prize to Cornell's Kleinberg for Contemporary Contributions in Computer Science

NEW YORK and BANGALORE, India, April 28 /PRNewswire/ -- ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery) www.acm.org announced today that Jon Kleinberg, a professor at Cornell University, is the recipient of the 2008 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences for his contributions to improving Web search techniques that allow billions of Web users worldwide to find relevant, credible information on the ever-evolving Internet. Kleinberg, 37, developed models that document how information is organized on the Web, how it spreads through large social networks, and how these networks are structured to create the small world phenomenon known as six degrees of separation.

Kleinberg's use of mathematical models to illuminate search and social networking tools that underpin today's social structure has created interest in computing from people not formerly drawn to this field. The ACM-Infosys Foundation Award , established in August 2007, recognizes personal contributions by young scientists and system developers to a contemporary innovation that exemplifies the greatest recent achievements in the computing field. Financial support for the $150,000 award is provided by an endowment from the Infosys Foundation.

"Professor Kleinberg's achievements mark him as a founder and leader of social network analysis in computer science," said Dame Wendy Hall, President of ACM. "With his innovative models and algorithms, he has broadened the scope of computer science to extend its influence to the burgeoning world of the Web and the social connections it enables. We are fortunate to have the benefit of his profound insights into the link between computer network structure and information that has transformed the way information is retrieved and shared online."

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