Chara Podimata

Chara Podimata is an Assistant Professor of Operations Research and Statistics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Lead Researcher at Archimedes/Athena RC. She holds the Class of 1942 Career Development Professorship and focuses on the intersection of Theoretical Computer Science, Economics, and Machine Learning, particularly in incentive-aware machine learning, social computing, online learning, and mechanism design.

• PhD in Computer Science from Harvard
• FODSI Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley
• Diploma from National Technical University of Athens

Her research explores the social aspects of computing, including how humans adapt to machine learning algorithms used in consequential decision-making. Recent work investigates policy questions related to AI and recommendation systems, adversarial robustness, and fairness in revenue management. She has received funding from Amazon, MacArthur Foundation, Google, and MIT GenAI Consortium.

Key trends in her publications include strategic classification, contextual search, multi-armed bandits with evolving preferences, and incentive-compatible mechanism design. These works bridge theoretical foundations with practical applications in responsible AI and user behavior modeling.

• Amazon Research Award (2023)
• Google Research Scholar Award (2025)
• MacArthur x-grant
• Microsoft Dissertation Grant
• Siebel Scholarship

As an advisor, Podimata collaborates with PhD students at MIT ORC, EECS, and MBAn capstone students. She is affiliated with the MIT Operations Research Center and previously worked with Microsoft Research and Google. Her personal page details her advising philosophy and research collaborations.