Pankaj Agarwal

Pankaj K. Agarwal is the RJR Nabisco Distinguished Professor of Computer Science in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Computer Science, Professor of Mathematics, and Bass Fellow at Duke University. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University in 1989 and joined the Department of Computer Science at Duke University the same year. He advanced to full Professor of Computer Science in 1998, was appointed RJR Nabisco Distinguished Professor in 2008 and Bass Fellow in 2005, and became Professor of Mathematics in 2009. Agarwal served as Chair of the Department of Computer Science effective August 2017. His distinguished career includes receipt of the National Young Investigator Award, Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and ACM Fellowship in 2002. He serves on the editorial boards of several journals, has mentored numerous graduate students and postdocs, and co-authored award-winning papers, such as the 2018 Best Paper Award at the ACM SIGSPATIAL International Conference with Aaron Lowe.

Agarwal's research interests center on computational and discrete geometry, encompassing paradigms and techniques, approximation algorithms, stochastic models, geometric optimization, kinetic geometry, data structures, arrangements, proximity problems, triangulation, motion planning, and geometric sampling. He also investigates shape analysis for representation, matching, clustering, and similarity searching; trajectory data analysis including segmentation, matching, clustering, and query processing; GIS applications such as terrain modeling and analysis, navigation, visibility, flow analysis, and ecological modeling; and databases and data mining topics like spatio-temporal databases, query processing, streaming, and automatic fact checking. He has authored books including Intersection and Decomposition Algorithms for Planar Arrangements (1991), Combinatorial Geometry (1995, with J. Pach), and Robotics: The Algorithmic Perspective (1998). Highly cited publications feature Simplification Envelopes (1996, 898 citations), Geometric Range Searching and Its Relatives (1999, 713 citations), Geometric Approximation via Coresets (2005, 621 citations), Exact and Approximation Algorithms for Clustering (2002, 540 citations), and recent works like An Efficient Algorithm for Generalized Polynomial Partitioning and Its Applications (2019) and Flood Risk Analysis on Terrains (2018). With over 29,000 citations and more than 250 scholarly articles, his contributions have profoundly shaped algorithms, geometric computing, and spatial data management.

Professional Email: pankaj@cs.duke.edu