Dr. Zoubin Ghahramani is a distinguished British-Iranian researcher and leader in artificial intelligence with dual appointments as Vice President of Research at Google DeepMind and Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Cambridge. Born on February 8, 1970, he received his dual degree in Cognitive Science and Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990 followed by a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from MIT under the supervision of Michael I. Jordan and Tomaso Poggio. His academic career spanned University College London from 1998 to 2005 and Carnegie Mellon University from 2003 to 2012 before transitioning to industry leadership roles. He served as Chief Scientist and VP for AI at Uber from 2016 until 2020, where he built and directed Uber's AI Labs following the acquisition of Geometric Intelligence, the startup he co-founded with Gary Marcus in 2014.
Dr. Ghahramani has made fundamental contributions to probabilistic machine learning, particularly in Bayesian non-parametric approaches and graphical models, with his development of novel non-parametric dimensional models such as the infinite latent model proving highly influential in the field. His research has resulted in approximately 300 publications that have garnered over 114,000 citations according to Google Scholar, demonstrating the profound impact of his methodological innovations. He is particularly recognized for his pioneering work on sparse Gaussian processes and active learning algorithms that have become foundational tools in the machine learning community. His election to the Royal Society in 2015 specifically cited his contributions to "probabilistic modeling and Bayesian nonparametric approaches to machine learning systems and the development of approximate algorithms for scalable learning," cementing his reputation as a world leader in the field.
Beyond his technical contributions, Dr. Ghahramani has played a significant role in shaping the broader AI research landscape through leadership positions including serving as the founding Cambridge Director of the Alan Turing Institute and Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. He contributed to the Royal Society's influential Machine Learning Report in 2017 and led the UK's comprehensive Future of Compute Review in 2023, advising government on strategic technological directions. In recognition of his outstanding achievements, he received the prestigious Royal Society Milner Award in 2021 for exceptional contributions to computer science in Europe. Currently heading Google DeepMind's research division, he continues to advance probabilistic approaches to artificial intelligence while mentoring the next generation of researchers and influencing policy discussions around the responsible development and deployment of increasingly capable AI systems.
