Daniel Kane

Daniel Mertz Kane serves as a full professor with a joint appointment in Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of California, San Diego, where he has established himself as a leading researcher in theoretical computer science, combinatorics, and number theory. Born in 1986 to academic parents in Madison, Wisconsin, his extraordinary mathematical talent emerged early, mastering K-9 mathematics by third grade and conducting university-level research under Ken Ono while still in high school. His academic achievements include two gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad (2002, 2003), being one of only eight people in history to become a four-time Putnam Fellow, and winning the 2007 Morgan Prize. After earning dual bachelor's degrees from MIT in mathematics with computer science and physics (2007), he completed his Ph.D. at Harvard under Barry Mazur in 2011. His research contributions span multiple areas, including groundbreaking work in computational statistics, Boolean functions, and machine learning, earning him numerous awards including the IBM Pat Goldberg Memorial and PODS best paper awards. He recently co-authored a book on robust statistics with Ilias Diakonikolas, to be published by Cambridge University Press