ETH Zürich ODIOptimization and
Decision Intelligence
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Portrait of Niao Heniao.he@inf.ethz.ch

Niao He

Associate ProfessorETH Zürich

I am an Associate Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, where I lead the Optimization & Decision Intelligence (ODI) Group.

My research is at the intersection of optimization and machine learning. Our goal is to develop the theoretical and algorithmic foundations for principled, scalable, and trustworthy decision intelligence—systems that can learn, optimize, reason, and make decisions reliably in complex and uncertain environments.

My current interests spans optimization for efficient AI, reinforcement learning, multi-agent systems, as well as emerging questions around generative models and LLMs. I am also interested in bringing these ideas to interdisciplinary applications in operations and finance, scientific discovery and education.

Affiliations

Institute of Machine Learning ETH AI Center ETH Foundations of Data Science Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems NCCR Automation ELLIS Unit Zurich

Academic positions

  1. Jan 2025 – present

    Associate Professor

    ETH Zurich

    Computer Science

  2. Dec 2020 – Dec 2024

    Assistant Professor

    ETH Zurich

    Computer Science

  3. Jan 2016 – Dec 2020

    Assistant Professor

    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

    Industrial and Systems Engineering

    Coordinated Science Laboratory

Education

  1. 2015

    Ph.D. in Operations Research

    Georgia Institute of Technology

    School of Industrial & Systems Engineering

    Advisor: Arkadi Nemirovski

  2. 2015

    M.S. in Computational Science & Engineering

    Georgia Institute of Technology

    College of Engineering

  3. 2010

    B.S. in Mathematics

    University of Science and Technology of China

    Special Class of Gifted Young

Honors, awards and grants

2025
  • Best Paper Finalist, L4DC 2025
2023
  • SNSF Starting Grant
  • SNSF Sinergia Grant
2021
  • ELLIS Scholar
2020
  • CAS Beckman Fellow
2019
  • NSF HDR TRIPODS Grant
2018
  • NCSA Faculty Fellow
  • List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent (UIUC)
  • NSF CISE CRII Award
2017
  • List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent (UIUC)
  • SIAM Early Career Travel Award
2016
  • List of Teachers Ranked as Outstanding (UIUC)
  • AISTATS Best Paper Award
  • Collins Scholar (UIUC)

Academic service

Associate Editor
SIAM Journal on Optimization; Mathematics of Operations Research; Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications
Senior Area Chair
ICML 2026; NeurIPS 2024
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

Thanks to the Swiss National Science Foundation, ETH Foundations, and NCCR Automation for generously funding our current research.