Jennifer Tour Chayes, associate provost for the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society at the University of California, Berkeley, is the recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest computing society. Dr. Chayes was honored for her effective leadership, mentorship, and dedication to diversity during her distinguished career of computer science research, teaching, and institution building.
Dr. Chayes joined the faculty at Berkeley in January 2020. She also serves as the dean of the School of Information and a professor of electrical engineering and computer science. Before joining Berkeley, she was a technical fellow at Microsoft, where she led research programs for more than 20 years. She was a co-founder of the Microsoft Research Theory Group, bringing together math, physics, and computer science research. Dr. Chayes went on to co-found and lead three noted interdisciplinary Microsoft Research laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, New York City, and Montreal. Earlier, she served on the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles for 10 years.
Professor Chayes is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Mathematical Society.
Dr. Chayes is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where she majored in biology and physics. She holds a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Princeton University.