René Vidal is the Rachleff & Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) University Professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering & Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Center for Innovation in Data Engineering and Science (IDEAS). He holds secondary appointments in Computer and Information Science and Statistics and Data Science. His research focuses on the foundations of deep learning, trustworthy AI, and their applications in computer vision and biomedical data science. Education: B.S. (Electrical Engineering, valedictorian) from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (1997), M.S. and Ph.D. (Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences) from UC Berkeley (2000 and 2003). Prior roles include Professor at Johns Hopkins University (2004–2022) and leadership roles in institutions like MINDS and THEORINET. Research spans machine learning (mathematics of deep learning, manifold learning), computer vision (activity recognition, medical imaging), biomedical data science (cardiac MRI analysis, autism diagnosis), and dynamical systems. Awards include IEEE Fellow (2014), IAPR Fellow (2016), ACM Fellow, and the IEEE Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award (2021). Current lab members include 15+ graduate students and postdocs working on topics like adversarial robustness, optimization theory, and biomedical applications. His work is supported by grants from the Department of Defense and collaborations with organizations like Amazon and NORCE. Labs/Teams: Director of IDEAS Center, MINDS, and THEORINET. Active in editorial roles for journals like TPAMI and CVIU, and program chair for ICCV 2015 and CVPR 2014.










