Lipton joins the academy as a member of its 2014 class. Lipton gives the College of Computing its second American Academy fellow, as he joins Zvi Galil, the John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing, who was elected in 2005.

Founded in 1780, the American Academy stands as a national champion for scholarship, civil dialogue and knowledge and remains one of the oldest learned societies and independent policy research centers in the country. The Academy’s membership has included more than 4,600 fellows and 600 foreign honorary members.

Lipton’s election was based on his strong reputation in computer science theory, cryptography and academics. His contributions also extend into program testing and software engineering. Along with Len Adleman, Lipton is considered one of the original pioneers of DNA computing.

Lipton explores one of the most daunting puzzles in computation theory in his blog Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP and recently updated the book People, Problems, and Proofs: Essays from Gödel's Lost Letter, which he co-authored with Kenneth W. Regan of the University of Buffalo.

Lipton earned his undergraduate degree in mathematics from Case Western Reserve University and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. He taught at Yale, the University of California in Berkeley and Princeton before joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 2000.

In addition to Lipton and Galil, Georgia Tech can claim four other academy fellows, including G. Wayne Clough, president emeritus of Georgia Tech and former secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, elected in 2010; Mostafa El-Sayed, a Regents Professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Tech, elected in 1986; Jim Meindl, Pettit Chair Professor of Microelectronics at Tech, elected in 1992; and Robert Nerem, an emeritus professor and former Parker H. Petit Distinguished Chair for Engineering in Medicine, elected in 1998.