David Alvarez-Melis

Kempner Institute Associate Faculty
Assistant Professor of Computer Science

Preferred Pronouns: He/Him
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KEMPNER GLOBAL COMMUNITY I speak: English, Spanish, Italian, French

Contact Information

Best way to contact me: Email

Email

dam@seas.harvard.edu

Office Phone

6174966399

Social Media

Office Address

150 Western Ave - Suite 2.332

Assistants

Subjects I Teach:

  • Machine Learning
  • Optimal Transport

Areas I Research:

About

David Alvarez-Melis is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Harvard SEAS and an associate faculty at the Kempner Institute. He is also affiliated with HDSI, CRCS, and Microsoft Research New England. Before Harvard, he obtained a PhD in Computer Science at MIT and spent a few years as a researcher in the Machine Learning and Statistics group at Microsoft Research. He holds BSc and MS degrees in Math, from ITAM (Mexico City) and Courant Institute (NYU), respectively.

Research Focus

Alvarez-Melis’ lab researches fundamental principles of artificial intelligence, with a focus in studying machine learning in constrained, dynamic, and multi-modal settings. His lab is particularly interested in developing deep learning models that can learn and adapt effectively in these challenging scenarios. To this end, Alvarez-Melis and his team take a data-centric approach, leveraging methods and ideas from various mathematical fields, such as optimal transport theory, information geometry, and optimization.