This year's ACM Turing Award winner credits DoC for introducing him to Computing.

Professor Leslie G. Valiant (an ex DoC student) on being congratulated by the department on his award, generously commented that 'It was Imperial College where he where he first got into Computing.'

Professor Leslie G. Valiant (an ex DoC student) has been named as this year's ACM Turing Award winner. On being congratulated by the department on his award, he generously commented that 'It was Imperial College where he first got into Computing.' Leslie was a postgraduate student here in 1971 and studied for the "Diploma of the Imperial College (DIC) in Computing Science", which was a forerunner of our current MSc in Computing Science degree.

Jim Cunningham, his project supervisor at the time, stated that "Les was a very self-sufficient person. His project report is a scholastic miniature that is still a model of clarity." His project was entitled "An approach to proving large programs", and may have been the department's earliest demonstration of interest in this hot topic.

He receives this award in recognition for his fundamental contributions to the development of computational learning theory and to the broader theory of computer science. He brought together machine learning and computational complexity, leading to advances in artificial intelligence as well as computing practices such as natural language processing, handwriting recognition, and computer vision. He also launched several subfields of theoretical computer science, and developed models for parallel computing.

Professor Valiant is a Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Before joining Harvard in 1982, he taught at Carnegie Mellon University, Leeds University, and the University of Edinburgh. He is a graduate of Kings College, University of Cambridge, with a BA in Mathematics, and Imperial College, London, where he received a Diploma of the Imperial College (DIC) in Computing Science. He earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Warwick.

The Turing Award is widely considered the “Nobel Prize in Computing" and is named after the British mathematician Alan M. Turing. The award carries a $250,000 prize, with financial support provided by Intel Corporation and Google Inc.

ACM will present the 2010 A.M. Turing Award at its annual Awards Banquet on June 4, in San Jose, CA.