Elchanan Mossel

Elchanan Mossel is a Professor of Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a joint appointment at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). His research focuses on probability, combinatorics, statistical inference, and their applications to computer science and social choice theory. He earned his B.Sc. from the Open University of Israel, and both his M.Sc. (1997) and Ph.D. (2000) in Mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before joining MIT in 2016, he was a faculty member at UC Berkeley and held visiting positions at the Weizmann Institute and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Mossel's work bridges theoretical foundations and applied problems, including computational complexity, randomized algorithms, Markov random fields, and evolutionary biology. He has made significant contributions to the theory of social choice, game theory, and the mathematical underpinnings of machine learning. Notable achievements include resolving the Majority Is Stablest conjecture and advancing phylogenetic reconstruction methods.

His awards include the Sloan Fellowship and Miller Fellowship. He has mentored numerous graduate students, including Sebastien Roch, Allan Sly, and Miklos Racz, and has held editorial roles in journals like the Electronic Journal of Probability. Mossel's teaching spans topics from introductory probability to advanced courses on social networks and game theory.