National Academy of Sciences Honors Indian Origin Computer Scientist Subhash Khot With 2026 Held Prize

Indian origin computer scientist Subhash Khot of New York University has been named a recipient of the prestigious 2026 Michael and Sheila Held Prize, awarded by the National Academy of Sciences at its 163rd annual meeting on April 26.

Khot, the Julius Silver Professor of Computer Science at NYU's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, was honored alongside Irit Dinur, Guy Kindler, Dor Minzer, and Muli Safra for their groundbreaking work on the 2 to 2 Games Theorem, which has been described as the strongest evidence to date for the Unique Games Conjecture, one of the most central open problems in theoretical computer science.

The award carries a prize of $100,000 and recognizes outstanding research in combinatorial and discrete optimization and related areas of computer science published within the past eight years.

Their work has reshaped the understanding of hardness of approximation and Probabilistically Checkable Proofs, with broader implications for problems including vertex cover and graph coloring.

A graduate of IIT Bombay with a doctorate from Princeton, Khot's previous honors include the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship, Fellowship of the Royal Society, and election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2023 — cementing his place among the world's foremost theoretical computer scientists.