Lap Chi Lau

University of Waterloo

Lap Chi is already an international leader in his field of combinatorial optimization and theoretical computer science, which is an exceptional accomplishment for someone so early in his career. He is known for a growing number of research innovations that have resulted in fundamental new results in algorithms and complexity. Lap Chi obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 2006 under the supervision of Michael Molloy. He then accepted a faculty position at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and joined the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in 2015. Lap Chi’s research spans the areas of theoretical computer science and combinatorial optimization. He is particularly known for results on approximation algorithms, spectral graph theory, and on the use of algebraic techniques for network optimization. His PhD work won the best student paper award at FOCS, the NSERC Doctoral Prize and the Canadian Math Society Doctoral Prize. Lap Chi is not only an outstanding researcher, but also an exceptional teacher. As a faculty member at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, he won the best teaching award three times and has already been a major force in the CS curriculum at Waterloo.