Tommi Jaakkola

Jameel Clinic Principal Investigator Tommi Jaakkola is the Thomas Siebel Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). Jaakkola received his MSc in theoretical physics from Helsinki University of Technology, 1992, and PhD from MIT in computational neuroscience, 1997. Following a postdoctoral position in computational molecular biology (DOE/Sloan fellow, UCSC) he joined the MIT faculty 1998.

His research group is focused on advancing how machines can learn, predict or control, and do so at scale in an efficient, principled, and interpretable manner. The research in machine learning extends from foundational theory to modern applications, focusing especially on statistical inference and estimation tasks that lie at the heart of complex learning problems. Jaakkola’s group designs new methods, theory and algorithms so as to automate the use and generation of semi-structured data such as natural language text, images, molecules, or strategies. They apply and develop our algorithms to solve multi-faceted recommender, retrieval, or inferential tasks (e.g., biomedical), design and optimize molecules or reactions for the purpose of drug design, and to model strategic, game theoretic interactions.

Research Group Website