Saman P. Amarasinghe

Saman P. Amarasinghe serves as Professor and Associate Department Head in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, where he leads the Commit compiler research group at CSAIL. After earning his BS from Cornell University and MS/PhD from Stanford University, he has established himself as a world leader in high-performance domain-specific languages since joining MIT in 1997. His research group has developed influential languages including Halide, TACO, Simit, and GraphIt, revolutionizing performance optimization for applications like image processing and graph analytics. His entrepreneurial ventures include founding Determina Inc. (acquired by VMWare) and co-founding Lanka Internet Services Ltd., Sri Lanka's first Internet Service Provider. As faculty director of MIT Global Startup Labs, his programs across 17 countries have fostered over 20 successful startups. Through his pioneering work in applying machine learning to compiler optimization and election as an ACM fellow in 2019, he continues to advance computer science while developing innovative courses like Performance Engineering of Software Systems.