Ziv Goldfeld, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, recently received a U.S. National Science Foundation Early Career Development (NSF CAREER) Award from the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF). The award supports his research proposal “Smooth statistical distances for a scalable learning theory” for a five-year period from 2021 through 2026 with a total amount of $641,761.
“The smooth statistical distances framework, around which the proposal was written, is something I have been developing for the past year and a half since joining Cornell,” Goldfeld said. “I think it holds great promise to progress our theoretical understanding of modern machine learning.”
Professor Alyssa Apsel, director of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, expressed appreciation of and support for Goldfeld’s work. “This project will develop a novel framework for high-dimensional inference based on smooth statistical distances, that gives rise to a scalable generalization and sample complexity theory for modern machine learning methods. We are excited to celebrate another great achievement among our faculty.”
Ultimately, Goldfeld’s project will promote the wide deployment of machine learning technologies with invaluable societal benefits, from better healthcare to safer roads and improved crisis management. The project’s educational component will nurture the next generation of scientists with an emphasis on increasing participation of women, who remain largely underrepresented in theoretical STEM disciplines.
The CAREER award is the National Science Foundation's most prestigious award in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.
“Receiving the CAREER award for it is a tremendous honor and a vote of confidence in those ideas, which means a lot to me,” Goldfeld said.
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