Caltech Professor Yaser Abu-Mostafa Awarded Kuwait State Award

PASADENA-The California Institute of Technology's Yaser Abu-Mostafa, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, received the Kuwait State Award in Applied Science on November 29.

The $50,000 award includes a gold medal, and recognizes original and fundamental research in a designated area of applied science. This year's area was information science and technology. Abu-Mostafa's work on neural networks, learning from hints, and computational finance was cited as the pioneering contribution that merited the award.

Abu-Mostafa is the youngest person to receive this award since its establishment in 1979. The awards ceremony was televised live in a number of countries. A reception by the Emir of Kuwait at the Royal Palace followed.

Abu-Mostafa received a BSc from Cairo University in 1979, an MSEE from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1981, and a PhD from Caltech in 1983. At Caltech he won the Clauser Prize for the most original doctoral thesis. He has been teaching at Caltech since 1983, and was recognized in 1996 with the Richard P. Feynman Award for Excellence in Teaching.