Xin Li, an assistant professor of computer science, has been selected by the National Science Foundation for its prestigious CAREER Award, which recognizes early-stage scholars with high levels of excellence and promise.
Li’s work focuses on the use of randomness in computation, complexity theory, coding theory, and cryptography. His research has led to a number of breakthroughs in the field of theoretical computer science; for example, his studies on the explicit constructions of randomness extractors have resulted in an almost optimal solution to the long-standing open problem of constructing explicit two-source extractors. His discoveries have contributed to the development of tamper-resilient cryptography and error-correcting codes, as well as the creation of more efficient computing methods using limited resources.
Li’s CAREER award will support his exploration of pseudorandom objects and their applications in computer science.