Sara MagliacaneView profile
Assistant Professor
Sara Magliacane is an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam and a Research Scientist at the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab . She leads research at the intersection of causality and machine learning , focusing on improving AI robustness, generalization, and safety through causal reasoning. Her work spans causal representation learning , causal discovery , and causality-inspired ML in domains like reinforcement learning and dynamical systems. PhD in Artificial Intelligence (2017), VU Amsterdam MSc in Computer Engineering (2011), Politecnico di Milano/Torino BSc in Computer Engineering (2008), Università degli Studi di Trieste Her research explores causal variable identification from high-dimensional data (e.g., images, sequences) and causal graph discovery for domain adaptation. Methods include CITRIS , FANS-RL , and SNAP , with applications in embodied AI and biomedical data. The group emphasizes theoretical guarantees and scalable algorithms for real-world systems. Recent work trends include temporal causal modeling , intervention-efficient learning , and nonstationary reinforcement learning . Publications cover topics like causal discovery in partially observed settings , causal graph pruning , and sample-efficient concept learning , often combining neurosymbolic approaches with deep learning. Scientific Awards : ELLIS Scholar Sara supervises PhD students across universities (UvA, University of Pisa) and collaborates with institutions like TU Delft , Harvard , and IBM Research . She co-organizes workshops at premier conferences (NeurIPS, ICML, AISTATS) and teaches causality courses at the University of Amsterdam and Harvard Data Science Initiative. Her lab, Amsterdam Machine Learning Lab (AMLab) , investigates causal structure in embodied agents , safe reinforcement learning , and hybrid dynamical system modeling . The group maintains active partnerships with institutions such as MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab , Qualcomm , and Adyen .
