معرفی
Matthijs Vákár is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, focusing on the software foundations of machine learning. He actively develops the Stan language, a state-of-the-art probabilistic programming language.
- Areas of Expertise: Bayesian Statistics, Category Theory, Compiler Construction, Machine Learning, Programming Languages.
- Research Themes: Probabilistic programming languages, differential programming languages, separation of modeling from algorithmic tasks, automatic differentiation in ML-family languages.
His research bridges theoretical computer science and practical machine learning, emphasizing logical relations, monoidal structures, and efficient compiler designs for differentiable programming. His recent publications explore correctness proofs, category-theoretic models, and optimization techniques in automatic differentiation.
Scientific Awards:
- ERC Starting Grant
- NWO Veni Fellowship
- Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship
Academic Journey: PhD from the University of Oxford (dependent types and computational effects), MSc in Pure Mathematics (University of Cambridge), and BScs in Mathematics and Physics (Utrecht University). Prior roles include postdoctoral research at Columbia University and the University of Oxford.
Industrial Experience: Build systems at Microsoft Research, NLP at Linguamatics, and compiler design for Stan.
