DSI Professor Named a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics

David Blei, a Professor of Statistics and Computer Science in the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, has been named a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). He was honored during the institute’s recent induction ceremony in Baltimore.

Blei received the award for his outstanding contributions to the fields of statistical machine learning and Bayesian methodology.

“I was thrilled to receive this honor and to join the ranks of other IMS fellows,”  said Blei, an acclaimed researcher whose work is widely cited.

To be named an IMS fellow is a coveted honor. Each person nominated for a fellowship is assessed by a committee of peers. This year, for instance, after reviewing 41 top nominations, 20 were selected for fellowship.

His pioneering research is in statistical machine learning, involving topic models, Bayesian methods, and approximate posterior inference with massive data. He works on a variety of applications such as text, images, music, social networks, user behavior, and scientific data. In his latest publication for the August 7 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he details how the techniques of data science can best be used by scientists to further their research.

Blei, a member of the Data Science Institute with appointments in Columbia Engineering and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, has received several awards for his research. Those honors include a Sloan Fellowship, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, a Blavatnik Faculty Award, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Infosys Foundation Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship. He is a fellow of the ACM and, with this latest announcement, a fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics.

— Robert Florida, Data Science Institute

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