Northwestern Computer Science Recognizes Promotion of Aravindan Vijayaraghavan
Vijayaraghavan was promoted to full professor of computer science
Northwestern Engineering’s Aravindan Vijayaraghavan has been promoted to full professor of computer science and (by courtesy), industrial engineering and management sciences, effective September 1.
As specified by Northwestern’s Office of the Provost, tenure and promotion reflects a faculty member’s high level of distinction in the field and professional achievement in the areas of scholarship, creative work, research accomplishments and potential, service, and excellence in teaching.
Vijayaraghavan was among seven Northwestern faculty members honored with 2026 University Teaching Awards. He was named Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence in recognition of his significant impact on undergraduate education at the University.
A member of the Northwestern CS Theory Group, Vijayaraghavan investigates the algorithmic foundations of machine learning, data science, combinatorial optimization, and quantum information.
Vijayaraghavan serves as a co-director of the Institute for Data, Economics, Algorithms and Learning (IDEAL), a multidisciplinary institute across Northwestern University, the University of Illinois Chicago, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago; the University of Chicago; Loyola University Chicago and Illinois Institute of Technology, in partnership with Google’s Learning Theory team. Through thematically focused programs including graduate course work, visiting predoctoral fellows, and workshops, IDEAL aims to develop the foundations of data science by combining perspectives from algorithms, econometrics, and machine learning.
A 2017 US National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award recipient, Vijayaraghavan is a member of the US NSF-Simons Foundation AI Institute for the Sky (SkAI) and the US NSF-Simons National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology (NITMB). His work has been supported by the Amazon Research Awards program, the Google Research Scholars program, and the US NSF Algorithms in the Field program.
“I am delighted that Aravindan Vijayaraghavan was promoted to full professor,” said Samir Khuller, Peter and Adrienne Barris Chair of Computer Science in the McCormick School of Engineering. “He has been the site director for IDEAL at Northwestern since 2022 and has also led the charge in creating new courses on quantum computing. His students have been publishing papers at all the major conferences in his field, and his group has had massive impact on research.”