Dr. Robert Brunner

Biography

Robert J. Brunner is a professor at the School of Information Sciences and in the Department of Accountancy at the University of Illinois. He holds an affiliate appointment in multiple departments including Astronomy, Computer Science, Electrical Computer Engineering, Informatics, Physics, and Statistics. He also works with the Beckman Institute and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. His primary research goal is to apply statistical machine learning to a variety of real-world problems, striving to make efforts easier, faster, and more precise. His work spans fundamental algorithm design, effectively incorporating uncertainty optimization with the use of novel computational technologies. Brunner is instrumental in promoting data science on campus, encouraging effective data management, analysis, and visualization techniques. He earned his PhD in astrophysics from Johns Hopkins University, where he worked on the development of a scientific archive for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and contributed to the statistical methods for quantifying galaxy evolution. After earning his doctorate, he spent five years as a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology, contributing to the Digital Sky project under the guidance of recognized scientists.

Research Interests

Experience