Mihai Patrascu is a junior at MIT, where he majors in Mathematics with Computer Science.

Mihai's research is in the area of data structures and algorithms. Mihai has solved three major open problems over his three years at MIT: in his freshman year, he solved a problem in data structures that had remained open for the last 20 years—tight upper and lower bounds on the partial-sums problem; in his third semester, he proved logarithmic lower bounds for several problems that were conjectured to require logarithmic time for over 20 years; and in his fourth semester, he made a major breakthrough in dynamic optimality. These and related results have been published in two papers at STOCS and FOCS, the top theory conferences, and in two separate papers at SODA, the premier algorithms conference. His publication record includes an additional four papers.

Mihai also has a perfect academic record, with a 4.0 GPA. Before entering MIT, he received numerous silver and gold medals in Informatics Olympiad competitions. Once at MIT, he worked as a volunteer to help organize the high-school Olympiads in Romania and the Balkans.

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