Finale Doshi-Velez and Yaron Singer named Sloan Research Fellows

Two computer scientists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have been named 2018 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellows.

Finale Doshi-Velez and Yaron Singer, assistant professors of Computer Science at SEAS, join 126 early-career scholars who “represent the most promising scientific researchers working today,” according to the Sloan Foundation.

Doshi-Velez’s work focuses on probabilistic machine learning with applications to healthcare and the law.  She is interested in building tools to help humans make decisions under uncertainty. Her work includes optimizing treatments for various diseases ranging from HIV to depression.  Her focus on human-facing machine learning also guides her interests in interpretable machine learning models and regulation around algorithmic explanation.

Doshi-Velez received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT, an M.Sc. in Engineering from Cambridge University as a Marshall Fellow.  Prior to joining SEAS, she was postdoc at Harvard Medical School. Doshi-Velez has received an NSF CiTRaCS postdoctoral fellowship, an NSF CAREER award, and an AFOSR Young Investigator award.

Singer’s work focuses on the intersection of algorithms and machine learning.  His work focuses on understanding the power and limitations of algorithms whose input is learned from data, design of machine learning algorithms that are robust to adversarial noise, and provably fast and very fast optimization algorithms for fundamental problems in machine learning.

Singer received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley. Before coming to Harvard, he was a postdoc at Google Research. Singer has received an NSF CAREER Award, Google Faculty Research Award and Facebook Faculty Award. As a graduate student, he received the Microsoft Research fellowship and the Facebook fellowship.

Winners of the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship receive $65,000 to be used as they wish to further their research.

Previous Sloan Fellows at SEAS include Jelani Nelson (2017), Demba Ba (2016), Shmuel Rubinstein (2016), Ryan Adams (2015), Ariel Amir (2015), Stephen Chong (2014), Krzysztof Gajos (2013), Vinothan Manoharan (2011), Marko Loncar (2010), Todd Zickler (2008), and Maurice Smith (2007).

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit institution that supports original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economics