Maurice Herlihy Receives The Fondation Sciences Mathématiques De Paris 2026 Chaire d’Excellence Award
- Posted by Ellie Chang
- on Sept. 15, 2026
Brown CS faculty member Maurice Herlihy is headed off to Paris on a six-month research and teaching opportunity, fully funded by the 2026 Chaire d’excellence Award from the Fondation Sciences Mathématiques de Paris (FSMP). This award hosts one or two of the most impactful applied mathematicians or foundational computer scientists in laboratories associated with FSMP in order to spur innovation on an internationally collaborative scale.
“Distributed computing is an exceptionally active and vibrant field in France. This six-month position at IRIF (Institut de Recherche en Informatique Fondamentale) gives me an incredible opportunity to collaborate directly with leading French researchers and deepen our shared work,” Maurice says. “During my stay in Paris, I will also teach a twenty-hour doctoral course exploring the deep connection between combinatorial topology and distributed computing, demonstrating how abstract geometric concepts can solve fundamental problems in computer networks.”
Maurice’s research has advanced the field of concurrent computing, particularly in non-blocking synchronization, wait-free data structures, and transactional memory. His work on hardware primitives for synchronization has led to widely adopted techniques that enhance the performance and reliability of multi-core processors. Over the years, his contributions have influenced both theoretical advancements and practical implementations in computer architecture, database systems, and distributed computing.
In recent years, Herlihy has been recognized with numerous honors, including becoming an inaugural CNRS Fellow-Ambassadeur in 2023 and winning the Dijkstra Prize three times, most recently in 2022. His latest honorary doctorates from Università della Svizzera italiana and Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) in 2025 place him among a distinguished group of past Technion recipients, including Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Angela Merkel.
While Maurice has mastered many complex mathematical and computational languages, he has yet to surmount one of the world’s most daunting linguistic challenges: “One more personal goal: I’m also hoping that six months will finally be enough time to master French verbs in the imperfect subjunctive voice.”
For more information, click the link that follows to contact Brown CS Communications Manager Jesse C. Polhemus.
