Ahan Mishra ’27, a computer science major in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, recently received the 2026 Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award from the Computing Research Association (CRA).
Eighteen other Cornell undergraduate researchers were recognized as finalists or with honorable mentions by CRA as part of its Undergraduate Research Award program, which recognizes undergraduate students at North American colleges and universities who demonstrate exceptional potential in computing research.
The selection committee noted Mishra’s excellence in theoretical computer science, particularly his work developing advanced algorithms for problems like recurring task scheduling. His solo-author paper, “An Optimal Density Bound for Discretized Point Patrolling,” was accepted at the Association for Computing Machinery – Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ACM-SIAM) Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA). The paper solved a difficult, long-standing conjecture on the pinwheel covering problem using novel simplification techniques, according to the selection committee.
On top of his research endeavors, Mishra serves as the co-president of the Artificial Intelligence Undergraduate Club at Cornell University and head of quantum algorithms for the Quantum Computing Association at Cornell, in addition to his role as a teaching assistant.
Of the 16 Cornell Bowers majors recognized by CRA, 9 participated in the Bowers Undergraduate Research Experience, a 10-week, full-time summer program that gives undergraduates a taste of research life.
Awardee
- Ahan Mishra ’27, computer science
Finalist
- Shubham Mohole ’27, computer science
Honorable Mention
- Zachary Cheslock ’25, computer science and mathematics; a BURE participant in 2024 and 2025
- David Domanski ’25, operations research and information engineering
- Joice Chen ’26, information science, sociology, and College Scholars
- Jeronimo Martin Duque ’26, economics, computer science, and math; a BURE participant in 2024
- Joonseok Jung ’26, operations research and information engineering
- Ziga Kovacic ’26, computer science, mathematics, and College Scholars; a BURE participant in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
- Kyung Sub (Daniel) Lee ’26, information science
- Ethan Lin ’26, computer science; a BURE participant in 2025
- Natalie Nguyen ’26, operations research and information engineering
- Bilal Afzal Shafi ’26, computer science, mathematics, and philosophy; a BURE participant in 2025
- Anisha Tehim ’26, biometry
- Samuel (Sami) Wolf ’26, computer science and mathematics
- Yuqing Wu ’26, computer science and operations research and information engineering; a BURE participant in 2024 and 2025
- Jingtian Wu ’26, computer science; a BURE participant in 2024
- Xinyuan Hong ’27, biometry
- Andrew Kang ’27, computer science and mathematics; a BURE participant in 2024
- Wei-Che (Harry) Lin ’27, information science; a BURE participant in 2025
Louis DiPietro is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science