BANGALORE, INDIA: ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery), an educational and computing society, today announced Jon Kleinberg, a professor at Cornell University, is the recipient of the 2008 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences.

The award recognizes his contributions for improving Web search techniques that allow billions of Web users worldwide to find relevant, credible information on the ever-evolving Internet.

Kleinberg, 37, developed models that document how information is organized on the Web, how it spreads through large social networks, and how these networks are structured to create the small world phenomenon known as “six degrees of separation,” said a press release.

The ACM-Infosys Foundation Award, established in August 2007, recognizes personal contributions by young scientists and system developers to a contemporary innovation that exemplifies the greatest recent achievements in the computing field. Financial support for the $150,000 award is provided by an endowment from the Infosys Foundation, the release added.

“Professor Kleinberg’s achievements mark him as a founder and leader of social network analysis in computer science,” said Dame Wendy Hall, president of ACM.

He further said that with his innovative models and algorithms, he has broadened the scope of computer science to extend its influence to the burgeoning world of the Web and the social connections it enables.

Wendy Hall added, “ We are fortunate to have the benefit of his profound insights into the link between computer network structure and information that has transformed the way information is retrieved and shared online.”

Kleinberg was cited for his work on the use of link analysis, a search technique that ranks the absolute number as well as the most relevant, trusted sources of pages linked to a Web search query. Using this approach, Kleinberg authored an influential algorithm that rates Web pages for their links to other pages (known as hubs) as well as the links they receive (known as authorities).

S. Gopalakrishnan, CEO and managing director, Infosys Technologies said, “We are especially proud to honor Jon Kleinberg whose research in the relationship between networks and data has led to a revolution in the way all of us seek, retrieve and share information around the globe.”