Alistair Sinclair

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Professor

Contact Information

677 Soda Hall

tel: 510-643-8144

sinclair@cs.berkeley.edu

Office Hours

M 1:30-2:30, Tu 12:45-1:45, 677 Soda

Links

Personal Homepage

Publications

Dissertations

Research Support

Natalie Chen
nchen86@berkeley.edu

Biography

Alistair Sinclair received his B.A. in Mathematics from St. John's College, University of Cambridge in 1979, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh in 1988. Prior to joining the Computer Science Division at Berkeley, he held a faculty position at Edinburgh and visiting positions at the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Computer Science (DIMACS) and the International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley. Sinclair was the recipient of the Goedel Prize in 1996, and the Fulkerson Prize in 2006.

Research Areas

Theory (THY)

Randomized algorithms; applied probability; statistical physics

Research Centers

Center for the Theoretical Foundations of Learning, Inference, Information, Intelligence, Mathematics and Microeconomics at Berkeley (CLIMB)

Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing (SITC)

Teaching Schedule

CS 294-180. Partition Functions: Algorithms and Complexity, TuTh 09:30-10:59, Soda 405

CS 70. Discrete Mathematics and Probability Theory, TuTh 12:30-13:59, Dwinelle 155

F. Martinelli, A. Sinclair, and D. Weitz, "Glauber dynamics on trees: Boundary conditions and mixing time," Communications in Mathematical Physics, vol. 250, no. 2, pp. 301-334, Sep. 2004.
Y. Rabani, Y. Rabinovich, and A. Sinclair, "A computational view of population genetics," Random Structures & Algorithms, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 313-334, July 1998.
M. Jerrum and A. Sinclair, "Polynomial-time approximation algorithms for the Ising model," SIAM J. Computing, vol. 22, no. 5, pp. 1087-1116, Oct. 1993.
Y. Rabinovich, A. Sinclair, and A. Wigderson, "Quadratic dynamical systems," in Proc. 33rd Annual Symp. on Foundations of Computer Science, Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1992, pp. 304-313.

Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) Test of Time Award, 2021
ACM SIGACT Distinguished Service Prize, 2017
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow, 2012
Diane S. McEntyre Award for Excellence in Teaching Computer Science, 2012
Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) Medallion Lecturer, 2008
Jim and Donna Gray Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching of Computer Science, 2007
Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize, 2006
Okawa Research Grant, 2002
Gödel Prize, 1996

Alistair Sinclair: Faculty Home Page