On Thursday, 26 June 2025, the ceremony conferring an Honorary Doctorate upon NTUA alumnus Professor Mihalis Yannakakis, from the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, USA, by the School of Electrical & Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens was held with great success.

At the ceremony, greetings were delivered by the Rector of NTUA, Professor Ioannis K. Chatzigeorgiou, and the Dean of the School, Professor Panagiotis Tsanakas. The scientific and research work of the honoree was presented by Professor Aristeidis Pagourtzis.

The official conferral ceremony followed, along with the presentation of the NTUA Medal to Professor Yannakakis, who then delivered a lecture entitled: “Explorations in the Land of Algorithms”.

A few words about Professor Mihalis Yannakakis

Professor Mihalis Yannakakis is one of the foremost scientists in the field of Theoretical Computer Science, with worldwide influence and contribution. He is known for his work in computational complexity, databases, software verification and testing, and algorithmic graph theory.

He graduated from the National Technical University of Athens in 1975 with a degree in electrical engineering and in 1979 earned a doctoral degree in computer science from Princeton University. He joined Bell Laboratories and from 1991 to 2001 served as Director of the Computing Principles Research Department. He subsequently 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 National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. He has been honored with the Knuth Prize, the Distinguished Member of Technical Staff Award, and the President’s Gold Award at Bell Laboratories. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and of Bell Laboratories. In 2020 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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