I was born on a cold
February day in 1975 as the first child of Bodil and Jørgen
Pagh. After living the first few months of my life in Copenhagen
(capital of Denmark), we moved to Esbjerg, by the North Sea coast, to
get closer to our relatives. When I was three years old my younger brother,
Mikkel, arrived, and we soon after moved to Vejle on the eastern coast
of Jutland. Here I would spend my adolescence, first going to
kindergarden at Kirkebakkens Børnehave (1978-81) and then going to
elementary school at Kirkebakkeskolen (1981-91). I did a lot of sports
then (soccer, swimming, table tennis, badminton, tennis, volleyball,
basketball, golf). At the same time I got interested in computers,
saving my my pocket money to buy first the ZX Spectrum, then the
Commodore 64 and the Amiga 500. In 1985 my parents worked at a
hospital in Saudi Arabia for 5 months, during which we all lived
there. Then, in 1986 my sister Maria was born - this time we didn't
move. In 1991, after graduation from 9.c, I started
high school at Rødkilde
Amtsgymnasium, where I got increasingly interested in
mathematics. I also found the time to engage in philosophical
discussions in the school magazine VIM, and held the post as cashier
for the student council. I participated in the "JP Forsker" science
competition, and in the "Georg Mohr" mathematics competition. Upon
graduation from 3.y in 1994, I went to study mathematics and computer science at Aarhus University. After a few years of
interesting studies, I decided to major in computer science, since the
most catchy mathematics was done at the computer science department(!)
In 1998 I was awarded a PhD scholarship, and began doing my best to
learn the craft (art?) of computer science research at the BRICS centre for basic research in
computer science. In december 1999 I obtained the degree of
"cand. scient." (equivalent to MSc). During 1999 I was chairman of Juniorklubben.
My thesis defence was in the fall of 2002. In August 2002 I joined the
recently founded IT University of Copenhagen
as assistant professor. In the summer of 2003 I married Anna Ostlin Pagh, and my daughter Selma was born. In the fall of 2005 we moved to Eslöv in Sweden, commuting to Copenhagen. In December 2006 our second daughter, Vera, was born. In 2012 we moved to Hjärup, Sweden. In 2009-2011 I was head of the Efficient Computation group, and 2013-16 I was head of the Theoretical Computer Science section. In 2013 I was appointed full professor. In fall 2018 I spent a semester at Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley. In 2019-2020 I am a visiting faculty researcher at Google Research.
Date of birth: February 6th 1975.
Gender: Male
Erdös number: 3
Languages: Fluent in Danish, Swedish, and English. Knows some German.
Last modified: January 3, 2020