Conferral of an Honorary Doctorate to Professor Michalis Yannakakis by NTUA

On Thursday, June 26, 2025, the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) held a successful ceremony to confer an honorary doctorate upon Professor Mihalis Yannakakis, a graduate of NTUA and a faculty member of the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, USA. The honorary doctorate was awarded by the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of NTUA.

During the ceremony, greetings were delivered by the Rector of NTUA, Professor Ioannis K. Chatjigeorgiou, and the Dean of the School, Professor Panagiotis Tsanakas. The honoree’s scientific and research work was presented by Professor Aristidis Pagourtzis.

This was followed by the official conferral ceremony and the awarding of the NTUA Medal to Professor Yannakakis, who then delivered a lecture titled: “Explorations in the Land of Algorithms.”

A Few Words About Professor Michalis Yannakakis

Professor Michalis Yannakakis is one of the leading scientists in the field of Theoretical Computer Science, with international influence and contributions. He is renowned for his work in computational complexity, databases, software verification and testing, and graph algorithm theory.

He graduated from NTUA in 1975 with a degree in electrical engineering and received his Ph.D. in computer science from Princeton University in 1979. He joined Bell Laboratories and served as Director of the Computing Principles Research Department from 1991 to 2001. He then worked at Avaya Laboratories until 2002. In 2002, he joined Stanford University, and since 2004 he has been a professor at Columbia University, holding the Percy K. and Vida L. W. Hudson Chair.

He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences. He has received the Knuth Prize, the Distinguished Technical Staff Award, and the Bell Labs President's Gold Award. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and of Bell Laboratories. In 2020, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

NTUA is proud to welcome Professor Mihalis Yannakakis back in his new capacity as a member of the distinguished circle of its Honorary Doctors.