Jelena Diakonikolas

Jelena Diakonikolas is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Statistics. She is also an affiliate of the Data Science Institute at UW-Madison. Her research focuses on large-scale optimization and its applications in machine learning. Prior to UW-Madison, she held postdoctoral positions at UC Berkeley and Boston University. She completed her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University.

Her academic journey includes a postdoctoral fellowship at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing and affiliations with leading institutions such as the Fields Institute and the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship program. She has organized numerous workshops, including sessions on optimization and sampling at the Simons Institute and NeurIPS.

Key research interests span optimization algorithms, distributed systems, wireless networking, and energy-efficient systems. Her work has been recognized with prestigious awards like the NSF CAREER Award and AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award. She co-founded the WISCERS program, which supports underrepresented undergraduates in research, earning Google’s exploreCSR award.

Jelena has advised multiple Ph.D. students, including Dr. Lin and Dr. Cai. Her contributions to mentoring earned her the Award for Mentoring Undergraduates in 2023. She remains active in academic service, serving on program committees for ICML, ICLR, and other conferences.