Steve Wright, Professor of Computer Sciences and former chair of Computer Sciences, has received two recent honors: He will give a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Philadelphia in July 2026, and he has been named a Vilas Research Professor by UW–Madison.
August 10-12, 2026 | Madison, WI | No Registration Fee
The AISTATS Test of Time Award recognizes a paper, published at the conference roughly a decade earlier, whose ideas have had unusually durable impact on the field.
The University of Chicago Data Science Institute faculty, affiliated faculty, and partners win seed funding to advance actionable AI weather forecasting in developing economies in Africa and Asia.
IFDS director Maryam Fazel received the 2025 Farkas Prize from the INFORMS Optimization Society. The Farkas Prize is an annual award honoring a mid-career researcher for outstanding, career-spanning contributions to the field of optimization. Fazel was recognized for her foundational work in optimization and pioneering contributions to data science and artificial intelligence." INFORMS citation
The Institute for Foundations of Data Science (IFDS) brought AI and machine learning experts from across the nation to the University of Washington to discuss and explore the mathematical, statistical, and algorithmic underpinnings of modern AI systems. The IFDS Workshop on Theoretical Foundations of Applied AI was held in August 2025 at the Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering on the UW campus.
A big thank you to the workshop co-organizers: Zaid Harchaoui (UWash), Kevin Jamieson (UWash), Robert Nowak (UWisc), and Maryam Fazel (UWash).
This workshop brings together a diverse group of theoreticians and applied researchers to explore the theoretical underpinnings behind the successes and limitations of modern AI.
Ilias Diakonikolas, Sheldon B. Lubar professor of Computer Sciences, received the 2024 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Grace Murray Hopper Award, one of the highest honors for young researchers in computing.
In an op-ed for Fortune magazine, Rebecca Willett, IFDS executive committee member, and Henry Hoffmann discuss how federal research cuts threaten to devastate America’s innovation and dominance in artificial intelligence.