Mihai Pătrașcu

Mihai Pătraşcu
Born	(1982-07-17)17 July 1982 Craiova, Romania
Died	New York
Fields	Computer Science
Institutions	AT&T Labs
Alma mater	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thesis	Lower bound techniques for data structures (2008)
Doctoral advisor	Erik Demaine

Mihai Pătraşcu (17 July 1982 – 5 June 2012) was a Romanian computer scientist at AT&T Labs in Florham Park, New Jersey, USA. As a high school student, Pătraşcu won multiple medals at the International Olympiad in Informatics. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies in Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completing his thesis under the supervision of Erik Demaine in 2008.

Pătraşcu’s work was concerned with fundamental questions about basic data structures. Pătraşcu received the Machtey Award for the best student paper at the Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science in 2008, and the Presburger Award from the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science in 2012, for breaking “many old barriers on fundamental data structure problems, not only revitalizing but also revolutionizing a field that was almost silent for over a decade.”

Pătraşcu died in 2012 after suffering from brain cancer for a year and a half.

Selected publications

• Preliminary version published in FOCS 2008, doi:10.1109/FOCS.2008.29.
• Preliminary version published in FOCS 2006, doi:10.1109/FOCS.2006.35.
• Preliminary version published in FOCS 2004, doi:10.1109/FOCS.2004.23. See Tango tree.

External links

• Pătraşcu’s blog WebDiarios de Motocicleta
• Google scholar profile
• Mihai Pătrașcu Memorial