Damek Shea Davis

Damek Shea Davis is an Assistant Professor in Cornell University's School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, College of Engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from UCLA in 2015 and joined Cornell in 2016. Davis focuses on mathematical foundations of data science, with particular expertise in optimization, statistical learning, and numerical algorithms.

His research develops theoretical frameworks and efficient algorithms for nonconvex, nonsmooth, and stochastic optimization problems. Key contributions include convergence guarantees for stochastic subgradient methods on nonconvex functions, analysis of optimization landscapes for phase retrieval, and development of methods for high-dimensional statistical estimation. His work bridges mathematical optimization with machine learning and signal processing applications.

Davis has received numerous honors including the Sloan Research Fellowship (2020) and INFORMS Optimization Society Young Researchers Prize (2019). His publications advance understanding of optimization algorithm behavior in statistically challenging regimes, with recent work exploring geometric convergence properties and optimality conditions.