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Niao He

I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zürich, and leading the Optimization & Decision Intelligence (ODI) Group. I'm also a core faculty member at:

  • Institute of Machine Learning
  • ETH AI Center
  • ETH Foundations of Data Science
  • Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems

    • My work lies in the interface of optimization and machine learning, with a primary focus on the algorithmic and theoretical foundations for principled, scalable, and trustworthy decision intelligence. I am also interested in developing machine learning models and algorithms for interdisciplinary applications in operations management, mechanism design, control & robotics, etc.

    Thanks to Swiss National Science Foundations, ETH Foundations, NCCR Automation for generously funding our current research.
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    Academic Positions

    • Present 2025. 01

      Associate Professor

      Computer Science
      ETH Zürich

    • 2024. 12 2020. 12

      Assistant Professor

      Computer Science
      ETH Zürich

    • 2020. 12 2016. 01

      Assistant Professor

      Industrial and Systems Engineering
      Coordinated Science Laboratory
      University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

    Education

    • Ph.D.2015

      Ph.D. in Operations Research

      Georgia Institute of Technology
      School of Industrial & Systems Engineering

      Advisor: Arkadi Nemirovski

    • M.S.2015

      M.S. in Computational Science & Engineering

      Georgia Institute of Technology
      College of Engineering

    • B.S.2010

      B.S. in Mathematics

      University of Science and Technology of China
      Special Class of Gifted Young

    Honors, Awards and Grants

    • 2023
      SNSF Starting Grant
    • 2023
      SNSF Sinergia Grant
    • 2021
      ELLIS Scholar
    • 2020
      CAS Beckman Fellow
    • 2019
      NSF HDR TRIPODS Grant
    • 2018
      NCSA Faculty Fellow
    • 2018
      List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent (UIUC)
    • 2018
      NSF CISE CRII Award
    • 2017
      List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent (UIUC)
    • 2017
      SIAM Early Career Travel Award
    • 2016
      List of Teachers Ranked as Outstanding (UIUC)
    • 2016
      AISTATS Best Paper Award
    • 2016
      Collins Scholar (UIUC)

    Conferences Program Committee

    • Area Chair: NeurIPS 2020, ICLR 2021, UAI 2021, ICML 2021, COLT 2022, ICML 2022, NeurIPS 2023
    • Senior Program Committee: AAAI 2019
    • Program Committee: ICML 2015-2019, NeurIPS 2016-2018, AAAI 2017, AISTATS 2016