By Jim Shelton January 21, 2021 Share this with FacebookShare this with TwitterShare this with LinkedInShare this with EmailPrint this The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) has presented the 2021 Michael and Sheila Held Prize to Daniel Spielman, Sterling Professor of Computer Science and professor of statistics and data science, for helping to solve a theoretical problem that had vexed mathematicians for decades. The Held Prize honors outstanding, innovative, creative, and influential research in combinatorial and discrete optimization, or related parts of computer science, such as the design and analysis of algorithms and complex theory. Spielman shares the award with Adam W. Marcus of the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and Nikhil Srivastava of the University of California, Berkeley.