Marina Meila has been named a Canada CIFAR AI Chair, recognizing her expertise in advancing the theoretical foundations of interpretable and explainable machine learning.
She joined the Cheriton School of Computer Science as a Full Professor in July 2025. Previously, she was a Professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Washington and a Senior Fellow of the University of Washington’s eScience Institute.
Professor Meila’s long-term research interest is in statistical learning, with a focus on discovery of geometric and combinatorial structure in data. Her work develops efficient algorithms, along with theoretical guarantees and validation methods for unsupervised learning under minimal assumptions about the data-generating process. She has collaborated with researchers in applied inverse problems, materials science, and theoretical chemistry.
She has an MS in Electrical Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, and a PhD in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT.
