UCLA Computer Scientist Raghu Meka Receives IEEE Computational Breakthrough Award

Raghu Meka, an associate professor of computer science at the UCLA Samueli School of engineering, has received the 2025 W. Wallace McDowell Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Computer Society. The award, named after World War II IBM electronics pioneer William Wallace McDowell, honors outstanding innovations in the field of computer science.

Meka was recognized for his groundbreaking work in theoretical computer science, complexity theory and, in particular, learning theory, which studies the foundations of computer science. Complexity theory can help identify the minimum computational resources required to verify a complicated solution, or the least amount of communication needed for information distribution. By using combinatorics and probability theory, often tools of pure mathematics, Meka has led innovations in theoretical computer science.

Working with Zander Kelley, then a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Meka made significant progress in solving a longstanding mathematical problem. The duo leapfrogged decades of incremental progress by dramatically lowering the maximum number of elements in an arbitrary progression-free set — where no three numbers are evenly spaced, ruling out combinations like 5, 8 and 11. For their contribution, the pair won a Best Paper Award at the 2023 IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science.

Meka’s other honors include a National Science Foundation Career Award, a Frontiers of Science Award from the International Congress for Basic Science and a Best Paper Award at the 2024 Conference on Learning Theory. He also leads UCLA’s participation in the Institute for Emerging CORE Methods in Data Science, a multi-university consortium developing principles for the fundamentals of data science.

Previous winners of the W. Wallace McDowell Award include Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web and HTML; Pradeep Khosla, the Chancellor of UC San Diego; and UCLA Samueli distinguished professor of computer science Rafail Ostrovsky. The society will present Meka with the award in November at its annual meeting in St. Louis, Missouri.