Martin Wainwright

Martin Wainwright is the Cecil H. Green Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Mathematics at MIT, affiliated with the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems and the Statistics and Data Science Center. He joined MIT in 2022 from UC Berkeley, where he held the Howard Friesen Chair. He earned his B.Math from the University of Waterloo and his PhD from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His research focuses on statistics, machine learning, information theory, and optimization.

Wainwright has received numerous awards, including the COPSS Presidents’ Award, Blackwell Award, and Sloan Fellowship. He co-authored influential books on graphical models, sparse statistical modeling, and high-dimensional statistics. His work spans theoretical foundations and applications in reinforcement learning, statistical inference, and algorithmic design.

He advises students in interdisciplinary areas and leads research initiatives at the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), fostering collaborations across engineering, statistics, and data science.