Chris Umans

Christopher Umans is a professor of computer science in the Computing and Mathematical Sciences Department at the California Institute of Technology. He is known for work on algorithms, computational complexity, algebraic complexity, and hardness of approximation.

Academic biography Umans studied at Williams College, where he completed a BA degree in Mathematics and Computer Science in 1996. He then received a PhD in Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley in 2000 under Christos Papadimitriou. Following his PhD, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research until joining Caltech in 2002.

Research Umans' research centers broadly around algorithms and complexity. He has made notable contributions to varied areas within this space including random number generation, expanders, and algorithms for matrix multiplication. A notable example is his work on developing a group theoretic approach for matrix multiplication.