Eric Price

Associate Professor
Email: ecprice@cs.utexas.edu
Office:GDC 4.510
Postal: Department of Computer Science
University of Texas at Austin
2317 Speedway, Stop D9500
Austin, Texas 78712

Biography

I am an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. My undergraduate and graduate education was at MIT, where I was fortunate to have Piotr Indyk as my advisor. After graduating in 2013, I was a postdoc at the Simons Institute in Berkeley and at the IBM Almaden Research Center before arriving at UT in Fall 2014. (CV)

Research

My research explores the fundamental limits of data-limited computational problems. How efficiently can we recover signals from noisy samples? And how much space do we need to compute functions of large data streams? My work has given algorithms with tight, or near-tight, sample complexities for a variety of such problems, along with corresponding lower bounds.

Examples areas of my research include:

One nice feature of sample and space complexity is that (unlike time complexity) we have the tools to prove matching lower bounds. A large portion of my research is on proving such lower bounds. Strong lower bounds give us a target to aim for, guide how algorithms should be designed, and tell us when to stop looking for better algorithms and instead look for better problems.

You can find my list of publications here.

Teaching

Spring 2024: Introduction to algorithms (CS 331).
Fall 2023: Randomized Algorithms (CS 388R)
Spring 2023: Honors introduction to algorithms (CS 331H).
Spring 2022: Introduction to algorithms (CS 331).
Fall 2021: Randomized Algorithms (CS 388R)
Spring 2021: Honors introduction to algorithms (CS 331H).
Fall 2020: Sublinear Algorithms (CS 395T)
Spring 2020: Introduction to algorithms (CS 331).
Fall 2019: Randomized Algorithms (CS 388R)
Spring 2019: Honors introduction to algorithms (CS 331H).
Fall 2017: Algorithms and Complexity (CS 331).
Fall 2017: Randomized Algorithms (CS 388R)
Spring 2017: Honors introduction to algorithms (CS 331H).
Fall 2016: Sublinear Algorithms (CS 395T)
Spring 2016: Honors introduction to algorithms (CS 331H).
Fall 2015: Randomized Algorithms (CS 388R)
Fall 2014: Sublinear Algorithms (CS 395T)

Former Students:

Misc

I ran the Algorithms and Complexity Seminar at MIT.

I created and maintain NewsDiffs, which tracks post-publication changes to online news articles. [slides]

I am a coach for USACO, the USA Computer Olympiad. This program provides an excellent algorithms education for high school students.

Publications:

Either look at all publications or the selected ones below:

Awards

and I used to be pretty good at math/CS contests: