David Sontag

David Sontag is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, affiliated with the Institute for Medical Engineering & Science (IMES), the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and the J-Clinic for Machine Learning in Health. His research focuses on advancing machine learning and AI, particularly in healthcare applications, including clinical decision-making, causal inference, and medical knowledge extraction. He leads the Clinical Machine Learning Group and co-founded Layer Health, a company applying AI to healthcare challenges. Sontag holds a PhD from MIT (2010) and previously served as an Assistant Professor at New York University. His work bridges theoretical foundations of ML with practical healthcare solutions, emphasizing robust, deployable systems.

Education: PhD in Computer Science (MIT, 2010). Awards include the George M. Sprowls Award for best doctoral thesis and multiple best paper awards. He explores topics like causal effect estimation, algorithmic fairness in healthcare, and scalable ML for medical data. His labs and collaborations drive innovations in digital twins, clinical NLP, and medical informatics.