Polina Golland is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT and a Principal Investigator in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Her research focuses on developing novel techniques for biomedical image analysis and understanding, particularly in medical vision, AI/ML, and health care applications. She leads the Medical Vision Group and collaborates with the Vision Group at CSAIL. Her work emphasizes statistical modeling of medical images, shape modeling, and predictive analytics for biological processes. Current projects include fetal MRI analysis, cardiac MRI segmentation, and quantitative assessment of pulmonary edema in chest X-rays. She has secured grants from NIH, MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, and other institutions to support her research. Dr. Golland teaches courses on inference, probability, and probabilistic systems. She advises graduate students in MIT's EECS program and has mentored numerous postdocs and researchers. Her lab focuses on translating advanced imaging techniques into clinical workflows, with applications in neuroimaging, fetal health monitoring, and cardiovascular disease analysis. Notable collaborations include work with Harvard Medical School affiliates, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the MIT Jameel Clinic. Her research aims to bridge computational methods with clinical needs, improving diagnostic tools and treatment planning through machine learning and medical imaging innovation.
Sewoong Oh is a Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he has been faculty since 2019. His research focuses on the foundations of machine learning with particular emphasis on differential privacy, secure and robust machine learning, and federated learning. Prior to joining UW, he was at the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2012-2019. He is affiliated with multiple NSF AI Institutes including ACTION (Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and Operation), AI-EDGE (Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence), and IFML (Foundations of Machine Learning). Oh received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2011 under Andrea Montanari, followed by postdoctoral work at MIT's Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems under Devavrat Shah. His educational background spans top institutions in theoretical computer science and electrical engineering. His research spans the critical intersection of machine learning security, privacy, and robustness. Oh's work addresses fundamental challenges in making AI systems reliable and trustworthy, with particular focus on defending against backdoor attacks, developing privacy-preserving algorithms, and creating efficient tokenization methods for language models. His recent SuperBPE work demonstrates how moving beyond traditional subword tokenization can significantly improve language model efficiency and performance. His research consistently bridges theoretical foundations with practical implementations, as evidenced by numerous open-source repositories containing production-ready code. Oh's publications reveal a consistent trajectory toward addressing security and privacy concerns in increasingly complex machine learning systems, with recent work focusing on language model tokenization, data-centric AI, and federated learning frameworks. His research shows strong interdisciplinary connections between theoretical computer science, statistics, and practical machine learning systems. ACM SIGMETRICS best paper award (2015) NSF CAREER award (2016) ACM SIGMETRICS rising star award (2017) GOOGLE Faculty Research Awards (2017, 2020) 2024 ICML Best Paper Award (for work by advisee Jon Hayase) Professor Oh maintains an active research group with numerous PhD students, postdocs, and undergraduate researchers. His students have secured prestigious positions at leading tech companies including Amazon, Google, and Snap, as well as academic appointments at institutions like University of Wisconsin-Madison and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He has received substantial research funding through his participation in multiple NSF AI Institutes and industry research awards from Google. His lab maintains several active GitHub repositories implementing cutting-edge research in backdoor defense, robust statistics, and privacy-preserving machine learning.
Luca Carlone is the Boeing Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT and a Principal Investigator at the Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems (LIDS) . He leads the SPARK Lab , focusing on developing certifiable perception algorithms for autonomous systems. PhD in Mechatronics (Polytechnic University of Turin, 2012) Research spans robotics, computer vision, and optimization Research Interests : Certifiable Perception algorithms for high-integrity systems High-level Perception (geometric, semantic, physical understanding) Efficient Perception methods for resource-constrained robots Scientific Contributions include: 2024 Outstanding Systems Paper Award (RSS) 2023 IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Award 2021 NSF CAREER Award 2020 AIAA Advising Award 2019 Amazon Research Award Advising : Teaches graduate courses like Visual Navigation for Autonomous Vehicles and Robotics: Science and Systems . Collaborates with institutions including JPL, Caltech, and KAIST through the DARPA SubT Challenge.
Adrian Weller is a prominent researcher and academic at the University of Cambridge, serving as a Director of Research in Machine Learning within the Department of Engineering. He holds multiple significant leadership roles including Programme Director for Trust and Society at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), and previously served as Programme Director for AI at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK national institute for data science and AI. His work bridges theoretical machine learning research with practical applications and societal implications of artificial intelligence. Weller's research interests span a broad spectrum of AI and machine learning topics with a particular focus on ensuring beneficial societal outcomes. His work encompasses explainability, fairness, robustness, scalability, privacy, safety, and ethics in AI systems. He has made significant contributions to trustworthy machine learning, including developing frameworks for AI governance, certification, and human-AI collaboration. His research group actively investigates neuro-symbolic approaches, privacy-preserving techniques, and methods for improving the reliability and interpretability of AI systems. His recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward addressing the practical challenges of deploying AI systems in real-world contexts, particularly focusing on certification frameworks, governance mechanisms, and human-centered approaches. His work spans theoretical advances in machine learning architectures while maintaining a strong connection to societal impact, with publications appearing in top venues across AI, machine learning, and interdisciplinary applications. Scientific Awards: MBE for services to digital innovation (2022 Queen's Birthday Honours) Turing AI Fellowship for Trustworthy Machine Learning Weller actively supervises a large group of PhD students and postdocs, with current students including Juyeon Heo, Yanzhi Chen, Katie Collins, Isaac Reid, Yichao Liang, Herbie Bradley, and Shoaib Siddiqui. His former students have gone on to positions at leading institutions including Google DeepMind, ETH Zurich, NYU, and MPI-IS Tübingen. He has served on numerous advisory boards including the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, UNESCO's expert group on AI ethics, and the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on AI. His research has been supported through his Turing AI Fellowship and various collaborative projects focused on safe and ethical AI development. Weller leads a vibrant research group focused on trustworthy machine learning, which actively organizes workshops and conferences including ICML 2024 (where he served as Program Chair), multiple workshops on responsible AI, and events through the ELLIS network. His group collaborates extensively across disciplines, working with researchers in computer science, social sciences, law, and policy to address the multifaceted challenges of developing beneficial AI systems.
Manik Varma is a Distinguished Scientist and Vice President at Microsoft Research India, and an Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academies of Science (IASc, INSA, NASI), the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He has received prestigious awards such as the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize and Microsoft Gold Star Award. Education : BSc in Physics from St. Stephen's College (David Raja Ram Prize) BA in Theoretical Physics from the University of Oxford (Rhodes Scholar) DPhil in Computer Vision and Machine Learning from the University of Oxford (University Scholar) Post-doctoral Fellow at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), Berkeley Visiting Miller Professor at UC Berkeley His research focuses on Machine Learning (Extreme Classification, Resource-efficient ML, Supervised Learning), Information Retrieval (Computational Advertising, Dense Retrieval, Recommender Systems), and Computer Vision (Image Search, Object Recognition). Recent work includes graph-regularized encoders, label variance reduction, and multimodal classification frameworks. His publications span extreme classification algorithms like NGAME , SiameseXML , and DECAF , with applications in IoT, web search, and recommendation systems. He leads a research group at Microsoft Research India and advises PhD students at IIT Delhi. Scientific Awards : Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize (Government of India) Microsoft Gold Star and Achievement Awards WSDM 2019 Best Paper Prize BuildSys 2019 Best Paper Runner-up Fellow of ACM, IASc, INSA, NASI, INAE He has supervised numerous PhD students, including Sonu Mehta and Suchith Prabhu, and collaborates with institutions like Microsoft Research India, IIT Delhi, and UC Berkeley. His research has led to scalable solutions for billion-label classification and resource-constrained IoT applications.
Andrew Stuart is the Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), joining in 2016. He previously held faculty positions at the University of Warwick (1999–2016), Stanford University (1992–1999), and Bath University (1989–1992). He earned his PhD from the University of Oxford's Computing Laboratory in 1986. Professor Stuart's research focuses on applied and computational mathematics , particularly Bayesian inverse problems , data assimilation for dynamical systems , and stochastic modeling . His work bridges mathematical theory, algorithm development, and applications in geophysics, materials science, and biological systems. His recent publications emphasize operator learning , machine learning for PDEs , and uncertainty quantification . Key areas include ensemble Kalman methods , Gaussian processes , and neural operators for solving and learning from complex systems. Scientific awards include the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship and election to the Royal Society of Great Britain . He advises graduate students in applied mathematics, computational science, and geophysics, including Edoardo Calvello , Hojjat Kaveh , and Florian Wolf .
Aarti Singh is a Professor in the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University and Director of the NSF AI Institute for Societal Decision Making. She leads research at the intersection of machine learning, statistics, and decision making, with applications to scientific and societal domains. Her work focuses on designing principled interactive algorithms for learning and decision making under uncertainty. Education: Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2008) M.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2003) B.E. in Electronics and Communication Engineering, University of Delhi (2001) Research Interests: Professor Singh's research centers on developing interactive machine learning algorithms that go beyond finding input-output associations to make higher-level decisions about the most informative data and actions. Her work spans autonomous decision making, including active sampling, stochastic optimization, bandits, and reinforcement learning that are statistically optimal, computationally tractable, and robust. She also investigates human factors in decision making, designing algorithms that model and leverage human feedback while accounting for bias, memory effects, and calibration. Her research has applications in material science, cosmology, and peer review systems. Research Trends: Professor Singh's recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on reinforcement learning, particularly in developing more efficient and robust algorithms for decision making under uncertainty. Her work bridges theoretical foundations with practical applications, spanning from fundamental algorithm development to real-world implementation in scientific domains. There's a clear trajectory toward integrating human factors into decision-making algorithms, with significant contributions to peer review systems and preference learning. Scientific Awards: NSF Career Award United States Air Force Young Investigator Award A. Nico Habermann Faculty Chair Award Harold A. Peterson Best Dissertation Award Multiple paper awards Advising and Grants: Professor Singh has advised numerous PhD and master's students, many of whom have gone on to faculty positions or research roles at leading institutions. Her research is supported by prestigious grants from ONR, Simons Foundation, AFRL, ARL, and NSF. She serves as General Chair (2025) and Program Chair (2020) for the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) and has held leadership roles in multiple professional organizations. Research Team: Professor Singh leads a vibrant research group within the Machine Learning Department at CMU, with current PhD students working on topics including reinforcement learning, human-AI collaboration, and decision making under uncertainty. She also directs the NSF AI Institute for Societal Decision Making, which brings together researchers from multiple disciplines to develop AI systems that support human decision making in societal contexts.
Mark Steedman is a Professor in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, where he conducts research in Artificial Intelligence, Computational Cognitive and Social Science, and Natural Language and Speech Processing. He is affiliated with the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC), the Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR), and the Human Communications Research Center (HCRC). He also holds an adjunct professorship in Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) , computational linguistics , prosody and intonation , temporal semantics , gesture in communication , and computational music analysis . He has authored foundational books including Surface Structure and Interpretation , The Syntactic Process , and Taking Scope . The recent publications reflect a strong trend toward integrating formal grammatical frameworks like CCG with modern neural and distributional models, particularly in semantic parsing, entailment reasoning, and cognitive modeling. His work bridges symbolic and statistical approaches in NLP, often focusing on robust, wide-coverage parsing and semantic interpretation. Best Paper Award at AACL/IJCNLP 2023 for 'Smoothing Entailment Graphs with Language Models' Best Paper Award at ACL 2023 for 'Extrinsic Evaluation of Machine Translation Metrics' Influential Paper Award 2017 from IFAAMAS for 'Animated Conversation' Mark Steedman has supervised numerous PhD students and collaborated widely across institutions. He leads research in formal grammar applications to cognitive modeling, dialogue, and multimodal communication. His lab contributes to CCG software and semantic parsing tools, and he continues to be actively involved in advancing the integration of symbolic and neural AI.
Amitabha Bagchi is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Delhi. His research spans data algorithmics, probability, networks, and theoretical computer science, with applications in distributed systems, social networks, and AI-driven platforms. He has published extensively in leading venues such as SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE, AAAI, and KDD, often collaborating with students and researchers on problems involving graph algorithms, fairness, and large-scale data analysis. Research Interests: His primary research interests include Data Algorithmics, Probability and Networks, Theoretical Computer Science, Distributed Algorithms, Graph Algorithms, and Machine Learning Theory. He investigates algorithmic foundations for real-world problems such as food delivery optimization, social network analysis, and efficient data structures for streaming and large graphs. Publication Trends: Recent publications focus on fairness in gig economy platforms, efficient solvers for graph Laplacians, generalization in neural networks, and temporal graph querying. His work combines theoretical rigor with practical impact, often involving GPU acceleration, distributed computing, and data-aware algorithm design. Scientific Service: Editor, Algorithms (2020–present) Editor, Journal of Discrete Algorithms , Elsevier (2006–2018) Guest Editor, special issue on Algorithms for Shortest Paths in Dynamic and Evolving Networks , Algorithms (2021) Volume Editor for proceedings of ESA, ATMOS, COCOON, and others Conference Leadership: He has served on numerous program committees and as chair for conferences including ESA (Engineering Track, 2016), ATMOS (2020), and ICALP (2019). His involvement spans algorithmic engineering, transportation optimization, and theoretical computer science forums. Teaching: He currently teaches COL863: Special Topics in Theoretical Computer Science on concentration inequalities and their applications. He has previously taught advanced courses in algorithms and data structures.
Huan Zhang serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with affiliate appointments in the Department of Computer Science and the Coordinated Science Laboratory. His research focuses on building trustworthy AI systems with formal verification techniques to provide provable guarantees for safety-critical applications, particularly in machine learning and neural networks. Dr. Zhang received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA in 2020, advised by Professor Cho-Jui Hsieh. His academic journey includes an M.S. in Computer Engineering from UC Davis (2014) and a Bachelor of Engineering from Zhejiang University (2012). Prior to joining UIUC, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University (2021-2023) with Professor Zico Kolter. Huan Zhang's research program centers on formal verification of machine learning systems, with particular emphasis on neural network verification, AI safety, robustness, and reliability. He pioneered the linear bound propagation-based verification framework that enables formal verification for networks with millions of neurons. His work spans five major research categories: formal verification of machine learning, training trustworthy ML models, machine learning safety and adversarial attacks, reinforcement learning safety, and optimization for scalable machine learning. His CROWN framework (NeurIPS 2018) established a foundational approach for neural network verification through efficient linear bound propagation. His recent publications demonstrate a strategic expansion from foundational verification techniques toward increasingly complex systems including large language models, vision-language models, and robotic control systems. The research trajectory shows a clear progression from theoretical frameworks to practical implementations with real-world applications, particularly in safety-critical domains. His work increasingly bridges formal methods with practical AI deployment requirements. Winner of International Verification of Neural Networks Competition (VNN-COMP) as team leader (2021-2024) Schmidt Futures AI2050 Early Career Fellowship ($300,000 research grant) Adversarial Machine Learning (AdvML) Rising Star Award (2021) IBM PhD Fellowship (2018) Dr. Zhang leads the development of α,β-CROWN, a neural network verifier that has won VNN-COMP 2021-2023, and auto_LiRPA, a PyTorch-based library for perturbation analysis on general computational graphs. He has mentored numerous graduate students from CMU, UCLA, UIUC, and Columbia University. His research is supported by significant funding including the Schmidt Futures fellowship and industry collaborations. He teaches courses including ECE 120, ECE 484, ECE 584, and ECE 598 HZ on topics ranging from computing fundamentals to safe autonomy and machine learning. Dr. Zhang maintains active research collaborations across multiple institutions and is affiliated with UIUC's Coordinated Science Laboratory. His work has significant implications for safety-critical AI applications in autonomous systems, healthcare, and other mission-critical domains where reliability guarantees are essential. He regularly gives guest lectures at institutions including Yale, Stony Brook, and the University of Nebraska Lincoln on formal verification techniques.
Gül Şen is a Senior Lecturer and Privatdozentin at the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies, University of Bonn, and also serves as a Lecturer at the University of Heidelberg. Her academic work focuses on premodern Ottoman history, historiography, and the dynamics of dependency, particularly in maritime contexts such as galley slavery and war captivity. She is actively involved in major research programs including the DFG-Priority Program 'Transottomanica' and the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies. Her research areas include: Premodern Ottoman historiography and narrative strategies Legitimacy of rule and political transitions Maritime unfree labor and galley slavery War captivity and captivity narratives in the 18th century Dependency and asymmetrical power relations in the early modern Mediterranean Her recent publications reveal a strong thematic trend centered on the interplay between narrative construction and social power, particularly in contexts of slavery and captivity. She investigates how historical actors used storytelling to assert legitimacy, cope with crises, and negotiate identity. Her work bridges literary analysis with social history, offering nuanced understandings of agency within systems of dependency. She frequently collaborates with leading scholars like Stephan Conermann and contributes to major edited volumes and series in Ottoman studies. Her scientific awards include: DAAD Award for outstanding academic achievements (2012) Postdoctoral Scholarship from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation (2012–2013) Postdoctoral Fellowships at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg (2015–2016, 2018–2019) Postdoctoral Scholarship from the University of Bonn (2019–2020) She has supervised numerous B.A. and M.A. theses at the University of Bonn and Heidelberg and has secured third-party funding, including a DFG project (€192,000) from 2016–2018 and Fritz Thyssen Foundation grants. She is co-editor of the 'Ottoman Studies' and 'Otto Spies Memorial Series' book series, and holds leadership roles in the Society for Turkic, Ottoman and Turkish Studies (GTOT) and the International Association for Ottoman Social and Economic History (IAOSEH). Her academic activities are deeply embedded in collaborative and interdisciplinary research environments. She is affiliated with the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies and contributes to the DFG-Priority Program 'Transottomanica,' where she examines mobility dynamics and captivity narratives. Her work is supported by a strong network of international collaborations and editorial engagements.
Kyros Kutulakos is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, where he leads research in computational imaging and 3D sensing. His affiliations include the Toronto Computational Imaging Group, Computer Vision Group, Dynamic Graphics Project (DGP), and Vector Institute Group. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses such as CSC320 (Introduction to Visual Computing) and CSC2530 (Computational Imaging & 3D Sensing). His research interests span computational imaging, non-line-of-sight imaging, single-photon detectors, 3D sensing, and neural rendering. Notable contributions include advancements in structured-light imaging, time-of-flight systems, and super-oscillatory microscopy. He has advised numerous PhD and MSc students, fostering cutting-edge research in imaging technologies. Kutulakos has received prestigious awards, including the Dean’s Research Excellence Award (2023) and multiple best paper prizes (e.g., Marr Prize at ICCV 2023). He has served as program chair for ICCV 2013, ICCP 2010, and CVPR 2003, contributing to academic leadership in computer vision. His work bridges optics, photonics, and computation, with applications in autonomous systems, medical imaging, and astronomy. Current research focuses on extreme imaging scenarios, such as imaging in pitch-black environments and around corners, leveraging novel sensor designs and computational techniques.
Lerrel Pinto is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University (NYU), where he leads the General-purpose Robotics and AI Lab (GRAIL) as part of the CILVR research group. His work bridges the gap between theoretical machine learning and practical robotics applications, with a focus on enabling robots to generalize and adapt in real-world environments. Dr. Pinto received his undergraduate degree from IIT Guwahati, followed by a PhD from the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley before joining NYU as faculty. His research program centers on robot learning and decision making, with several key thrusts that demonstrate his innovative approach to robotics. Pinto's work emphasizes large-scale learning techniques that leverage both extensive data and sophisticated model architectures. A significant portion of his research focuses on representation learning for sensory data, particularly developing methods that enable robots to make sense of visual, tactile, and auditory inputs. His lab has made notable contributions to reinforcement learning algorithms that allow robots to adapt to new scenarios with minimal retraining. Pinto also champions open-source robotics , developing affordable robot platforms that democratize access to robotics research. Analysis of Pinto's recent publications reveals a strong trend toward multimodal perception in robotics, integrating visual, tactile, and auditory information to create more robust robot systems. His work increasingly focuses on zero-shot and few-shot learning capabilities, enabling robots to handle novel situations without extensive retraining. There's also a clear progression toward general-purpose robotics , moving away from task-specific solutions toward more flexible systems that can handle diverse real-world challenges. Dr. Pinto's scientific contributions have been recognized with several prestigious awards: Sloan Research Fellowship (2025) NSF CAREER Award (2024) RAL Early Career Award (2024) Best Student Paper Award at ICRA (2016) Outstanding Paper Award at MFM-EAI workshop at ICML (2024) Best Paper Award at NGSM workshop at ICML (2024) Best Student Paper Award at RSS (2023) As an advisor, Pinto has mentored numerous students who have gone on to impactful careers in both academia and industry. His former PhD student Denis Yarats co-founded Perplexity.AI, while Mahi Shafiullah became a postdoc at UC Berkeley and Meta AI. Many of his Masters students have pursued PhDs at top institutions like CMU, MIT, and Stanford, or joined leading robotics companies including 1X, Fauna Robotics, and NVIDIA. Pinto's lab has secured significant research funding, including the NSF CAREER award and likely other grants supporting his robotics research program. The General-purpose Robotics and AI Lab (GRAIL) that Pinto leads brings together a diverse team of researchers working on cutting-edge robotics challenges. The lab maintains strong collaborations with industry partners and other academic institutions, facilitating technology transfer and real-world impact. GRAIL's research spans multiple robotics platforms and focuses on developing algorithms that enable robots to learn from diverse experiences and generalize across environments.
William Chueh is a Professor in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Energy Science & Engineering at Stanford University. He serves as Director of the Precourt Institute for Energy and Faculty Director of the Energy Innovation and Emerging Technologies Program. His research focuses on redox-active materials for energy storage, conversion, and carbon-neutral energy cycles. Education: PhD, Materials Science, Caltech (2010) BS, Applied Physics, Caltech (2005) Research Interests: Energy storage and conversion systems (batteries, fuel cells, electrolyzers) Multi-scale electrochemical and chemical reaction dynamics Materials design rules for redox-active solids Thermodynamic frameworks for sustainable energy Publication Trends: His work spans fundamental materials synthesis, electrochemical characterization, and modeling of redox reactions. Key themes include solar thermochemical cycles, ceria-based systems for CO2/H2O conversion, and advanced battery technologies. Scientific Honors: Outstanding Young Investigator Award (MRS, 2018) Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2016) Sloan Research Fellowship (2016) CAREER Award (NSF, 2015) Advising: He advises students in energy technologies, materials science, and electrochemistry, including doctoral and master’s candidates. Contact: wchueh@stanford.edu
Stanislav Smirnov is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Geneva, where he has been a faculty member since 2003. He also holds a part-time position at the Chebyshev Laboratory of St. Petersburg State University. As Director of the National Centre of Competence in Research SwissMAP since 2014, he leads a major research initiative funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. His education includes a mathematics degree from St. Petersburg State University (1992) and a PhD from the California Institute of Technology (1996). Prior to joining Geneva, he held positions at Yale University, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Max Planck Institute in Bonn, and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Professor Smirnov's research focuses on the mathematical foundations of statistical physics, with particular emphasis on conformal invariance in two-dimensional lattice models. His work has revolutionized our understanding of critical phenomena through rigorous mathematical approaches, establishing deep connections between probability theory, complex analysis, and statistical mechanics. He develops novel discrete complex analysis techniques to prove continuum limits of lattice models at criticality. His publication record shows consistent advancement in understanding random planar geometry, percolation theory, and the Ising model, with increasing attention to Liouville quantum gravity in recent years. His work bridges deep mathematical analysis with physical insights, often providing rigorous proofs for phenomena previously understood only through physical intuition. Fields Medal (2010) for the proof of conformal invariance of percolation and the planar Ising model in statistical physics As an advisor, Professor Smirnov has mentored doctoral students including Ekin Arikök and Nikolai Bobenko. He leads the ANALYSE, PHYSIQUE MATHÉMATIQUE ET PROBABILITÉS research group at the University of Geneva. His research is supported by major grants including the NCCR SwissMAP, European Research Council's AG COMPASP, and Swiss National Science Foundation grants 200020_143434 and 200020_141329. Professor Smirnov has organized numerous influential conferences, including the "Conformal maps from probability to physics" workshop at Monte Verità (2010) and multiple "Random Planar Geometry" meetings in Les Diablerets, fostering collaboration between mathematicians and physicists working on critical phenomena and random geometry.
