Arvind, longtime MIT professor and prolific computer scientist, dies at 77

Arvind Mithal, the Charles W. and Jennifer C. Johnson Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at MIT, head of the computer science faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and a key figure in the MIT community, passed away on June 17. Known simply as Arvind, he was 77 years old.

A prolific researcher who led the Computation Structures Group in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Arvind was a member of the MIT faculty for nearly five decades.

“He was loved by many people across the MIT community and around the world, who were inspired by his intellectual brilliance and enthusiasm for life,” President Sally Kornbluth wrote in a letter to the MIT community today.

As a scientist, Arvind was known for his significant contributions to dataflow computing, which aims to optimize data flow to use parallelism, achieving faster and more efficient computation.

In the past 25 years, his research interests expanded to include developing techniques and tools for formal modeling, high-level synthesis, and formal verification of complex digital devices like microprocessors and hardware accelerators. He also worked on memory models and cache coherence protocols for parallel computing architectures and programming languages.

Those who knew Arvind describe him as a unique individual with expertise ranging from high-level theoretical systems to the languages and compilers down to the gates and structures of silicon hardware.

Arvind’s work has wide-ranging applications, from reducing the energy and space needed by data centers to improving the design of more efficient multicore computer chips.

“Arvind was both an outstanding scholar in computer architecture and programming languages and a dedicated teacher who brought systems-level thinking to our students. He was also an exceptional academic leader, often leading curriculum changes and contributing to the Engineering Council in meaningful and impactful ways. I will greatly miss his wise advice and wisdom,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, chief innovation and strategy officer, dean of engineering, and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.