A professor in the School of Computer Science (SCS) was among nineteen faculty members recently recognized by the University System of Georgia (USG) Board of Regents (BOR). 

During its 2026 awards cycle, the BOR appointed Santosh Vempala as Regents’ Professor. The appointment recognizes Vempala’s sustained contributions to his field, students, and the broader research and education communities.  

Vempala began working at Georgia Tech in 2006. In addition to his role in SCS, Vempala is an adjunct professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Mathematics and the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. 

Vempala has served as director of the Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization (ACO) program since 2022. He also holds the Frederick Storey II Chair of Computing. 

His research interests include algorithms, randomness, high-dimensional geometry, the brain, and computing for good. 

Last year, Vempala co-authored a research study from OpenAI and Georgia Tech that found that pre- and post-training shortcomings are what lead LLMs to provide seemingly plausible but false responses known as hallucinations.