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Mahdi Soltanolkotabi is the director of the center on AI Foundations for the Sciences (AIF4S) at the University of Southern California. He holds the Andrew Erna Viterbi Early Career Chair and is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Department of Computer Science, and the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Prior to joining USC, he completed his PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 2014 and was a postdoctoral researcher in the EECS department at UC Berkeley from 2014 to 2015. His research focuses on developing mathematical foundations for modern data science and artificial intelligence, characterizing the behavior and pitfalls of contemporary nonconvex learning optimization algorithms with applications in AI reliability and trustworthiness. His specific research interests include high-dimensional probability statistics, statistical inference, AI safety and reliability, and optimization in machine learning. Mahdi has received several awards, including the Amazon GenAI Research Award in 2024 and the NIH Director's New Innovator Award in 2023.
GRE is NOT required for Master's applicants for 2025-2026.