Bakhadyr Khoussainov

Bakhadyr Khoussainov is a computer scientist and mathematician. He joined The University of Auckland in New Zealand in 1996 as a lecturer. Since 2004 he is a professor[1] of Computer Science at the University of Auckland.

He was born in Tashkent in 1961. He received his undergraduate education at the Mathematics department of Tashkent University from 1978 to 1981. In 1981, he moved to Novosibirsk to study algebra and logic in the Mathematics department of Novosibirsk University. In 1988, he received his Candidate of Sciences degree (equivalent to a PhD) in Algebra and Logic under the supervision of Professor Sergei Goncharov. From 1996 to 1998, he held an Ｈ.C. Wang Assistant Professorship at the Mathematics Department of Cornell University. Khoussainov has held visiting positions at Cornell University, University of Chicago, National University of Singapore, Kyoto University, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include mathematical logic, computability theory, computable model theory, and algorithms. With Anil Nerode, he is the co-founder of the theory of automatic structures[2] (an extension of the theory of automatic groups).

Khoussainov is a recipient of the 2020 Humboldt prize (the first New Zealand computer scientist to receive it[3]), a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand,[4] and a co-winner of the STOC 2017 best paper award[5] (for designing a quasi-polynomial time algorithm deciding parity games). He is also a recipient of the 2002 New Zealand Mathematical Society Research Excellence Award,[6] multiple Marsden Fund grants [7] (2001, 2004, 2008, and 2012), National Natural Science Foundation grant (2021), the 2019 Aitken Lecturership[8] awarded jointly by the London Mathematical Society with the New Zealand Mathematical Society, and a multi-time recipient of the JSPS Invitation Fellowship[9] (2001, 2012, and 2014). Khoussainov is also a co-winner of the EATCS-IPEC Nerode Prize, 2021, for outstanding papers in the area of multivariate algorithmics; the award is presented annually with a presentation taking place at IPEC (International Symposium on Parameterized and Exact Computation).