Stratos Idreos Appointed Faculty Co-Director of Harvard Data Science Initiative

Stratos Idreos, the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been named Faculty Co-Director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI). Idreos will join Francesca Dominici, Faculty Director of the HDSI, in leading the Initiative.

Since its launch in 2017, the HDSI has united data science research and education efforts across the university. It has brought together leading computer scientists, statisticians, and experts from a range of disciplines including law, business, education, medicine and public health to advance data science in personalized health, public policy, scientific discovery and more. 

David C. Parkes, the John A. Paulson Dean of SEAS, served as Faculty Co-Director of the Initiative from 2017 to 2023. 

At SEAS, Idreos directs the Data Systems Laboratory. His lab is developing fast self-designing data engines that accelerate research and improve productivity across several data-intensive areas including data analytics, data science and artificial intelligence. Self-designing data engines shape themselves automatically to the data, hardware and application context to achieve the best possible performance.

Idreos joined SEAS in 2014. He completed his undergraduate studies and master’s degree at Technical University of Crete in Greece, and his Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam. He has received the United States Department of Energy Early Career Award, an NSF CAREER Grant, and multiple recognitions from the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Management of Data. In 2023, he was awarded the Capers W. McDonald and Marion K. McDonald Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising.