PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Piotr Indyk

Piotr Indyk is a computer scientist whose algorithms help search high-dimensional data and process massive streams. He earned a Magister degree at the University of Warsaw, completed a PhD at Stanford, and joined MIT in 2000. His research includes locality-sensitive hashing and sparse Fourier methods. A graph-structured sparsity paper won an ICML 2015 Best Paper Award, and ACM named him a Fellow in 2015. As of October 2026, he is a professor at MIT and co-director of the Foundations of Data Science Institute.

Now at
MIT CSAIL
Works
412
Citations
30,801
h-index
76

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 15 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1995–2000

    From Warsaw to MIT

    He earns a Magister degree from the University of Warsaw in 1995. After earning a PhD at Stanford, he joins MIT in September 2000.

  2. 2002–2003

    An NSF award and two fellowships

    He receives an NSF Career Award in 2002, a Packard Fellowship in 2003, and a Sloan Fellowship in 2003. His research focuses on efficient algorithms for high-dimensional geometry, sketching, streaming, and sparse recovery.

  3. 2012

    Sparse Fourier transform

    With Dina Katabi, Haitham Hassanieh, and Eric Price, he announces the sparse Fourier transform for processing data streams. MIT Technology Review names it to its 2012 list of the 10 most important emerging technologies. His locality-sensitive hashing speeds approximate nearest-neighbor search for machine learning, and he receives the 2012 Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award.

  4. 2015

    A Best Paper and ACM Fellowship

    His paper “A Nearly-Linear Time Framework for Graph-Structured Sparsity” wins an ICML 2015 Best Paper Award. ACM names him a Fellow in 2015.

  5. 2023–2024

    Academy elections

    The American Academy of Arts & Sciences elects him in 2023, and the National Academy of Sciences elects him in 2024.

  6. 2026

    An engineering academy election

    The National Academy of Engineering elects him in 2026 for his approximate nearest neighbor search, streaming, and sketching algorithms for massive data processing.

  7. As of October 2026

    Professor at MIT

    As of October 2026, he is the Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, a CSAIL principal investigator, and co-director of the Foundations of Data Science Institute. His research interests include high-dimensional geometry, streaming algorithms, and machine-learning algorithms.

Sources and credits

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  1. Piotr Indyk | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  2. Indyk elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences - MIT EECS eecs.mit.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  3. Indyk, Piotr • The David and Lucile Packard Foundation packard.org. Checked 15 October 2026.
  4. Faster fourier transform named one of world’s most important emerging technologies | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology news.mit.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  5. Schedule | ICML Lille icml.cc. Checked 15 October 2026.
  6. Piotr Indyk named ACM fellow | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  7. CSAIL’s Rus and Indyk elected to the National Academy of Sciences | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  8. Piotr Indyk elected to the National Academy of Engineering | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  9. MIT community members elected to the National Academy of Engineering for 2026 - MIT EECS eecs.mit.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  10. Piotr Indyk people.csail.mit.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.