Tim Roughgarden

Timothy Avelin Roughgarden (born July 20, 1975) is an American computer scientist specializing in theoretical computer science, algorithmic game theory and mechanism design, who holds positions at Columbia University and, beginning in 2026, the Institute for Advanced Study, and serves as founding head of research at a16z crypto. His early work on selfish routing used the concept of the price of anarchy to analyze how individual decisions affect the efficiency of network performance. He received the Godel Prize in 2012, the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award in 2009, and the Frederick W. Lanchester Prize in 2019, and was named an ACM Fellow in 2023. He has published widely used textbooks including Twenty Lectures on Algorithmic Game Theory.