EECS faculty member Caroline Uhler receives tenure

Caroline Uhler, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has been granted tenure, the EECS department has announced.

Uhler, who is also a faculty member in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Sciences (LIDS) and a core faculty member of the Institute for Data Systems and Society (IDSS), came to MIT in 2015 as an assistant professor. She was promoted to associate professor in 2018.

“Caroline has made substantial contributions to theory and applications of probabilistic graphical models,” Asu Ozdaglar, EECS department head, noted in her announcement. “She utilizes her knowledge of algebra, algebraic geometry, graph theory, optimization and combinatorics, and statistical modeling to create new paradigms and to answer important questions at the interface of statistics, machine learning and optimization, including causal inference (with focus on causal structure discovery from both observational and interventional data), efficient inference with Gaussian graphical models with special structure, and experimental design. She is particularly motivated by statistical problems arising in genomics.”

Uhler has also “made fundamental contributions, including efficient computation for Bayesian estimation problems with linear constraints on the covariance matrix, providing a beautiful theory for graphical models that enjoy a particular form of positive association, called Multivariate Totally Positive models, or MTP2, (a property that emerges in a variety of domains ranging from phylogenetics to finance) and presenting the first causal structure discovery algorithm that is provably consistent in the interventional setting,” Ozdaglar said.  In addition, “she is also actively working at the intersection of statistics, applied mathematics, and biology, motivated by her interest in learning gene regulatory networks,” Ozdaglar noted.

“Caroline’s warmth, energy, and exceptional intellectual achievements have made her such an important part of the LIDS community,” said LIDS director John Tsitsiklis. “It is wonderful to see her immense talent recognized in this way, and a privilege to have her here at LIDS.”