Sanjay Ghemawat is a prominent computer scientist known for his contributions to the fields of algorithms and data structures. He is a professor at Stanford University and has co-authored influential research papers that have advanced the understanding of efficient data processing and storage. Ghemawat is also recognized for his work at Google, where he played a key role in developing the MapReduce programming model. This model has significantly impacted how large-scale data processing is conducted, enabling efficient handling of vast amounts of information across distributed systems.