Suvrit Sra receives NSF CAREER Award

Suvrit Sra, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a core faculty member of both IDSS and the Statistics and Data Science Center (SDSC), has received an NSF career award for his research “Modern nonconvex optimization for machine learning: foundations of geometric and scalable techniques.”

With the notion that mathematical optimization greatly influences machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, this research aims to develop foundational theory for geometric optimization, large-scale nonconvex optimization, and deep neural networks. More specifically, Sra asserts the project will “develop scalable new algorithms that could greatly speed up neural network training, and also make progress that reduces the gap between the theory and real-world practice of nonconvex optimization.”

Sra is interested in applications of machine learning to materials science, education, healthcare, as well as data-driven discovery.

Read full award information.