Erik Demaine

Erik D. Demaine (b. February 28, 1981, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada), is a professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Early life

Erik was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His parents are Martin Demaine and Judy Anderson. At age 7, he spent time travelling North America with his father, Martin Demaine, an artist and sculptor; he was home-schooled. He entered Dalhousie University in Canada at the age of 12, completed his bachelor's degree when only 14 and completed his PhD when only 20 years old.

Professional accomplishments

His PhD dissertation, a seminal work in the field of computational origami, was completed at the University of Waterloo. This work was awarded the Canadian Governor General's Gold Medal from the University of Waterloo and the NSERC Doctoral Prize (2003) for the best PhD thesis and research in Canada (one of four awards).This thesis work was largely incorporated into a book.

He joined the MIT faculty in 2001 at age 20, reportedly the youngest professor in the history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.In 2003 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

He is a member of the Theory of Computation group at MIT Computer Science and......
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