Lester Mackey is an American computer scientist and statistician. He is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and an adjunct professor at Stanford University. Mackey develops machine learning methods, models, and theory for large-scale learning tasks driven by applications from climate forecasting, healthcare, and the social good. He was named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow.[1]
Lester Wayne Mackey II | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Alma mater | University of California, Berkeley Princeton |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Machine learning Computer science Statistics |
| Institutions | Microsoft Research Stanford University |
| Thesis | Matrix Factorization and Matrix Concentration (2012) |
| Doctoral advisor | Michael I. Jordan |
| Website | https://web.stanford.edu/~lmackey |
Early life and education
editMackey grew up on Long Island.[2] He has said that, as a teenager, the Ross Mathematics Program in number theory introduced him to proof-based mathematics, where he learned about induction and rigorous proof.[2] He got his first taste of academic research at the Research Science Institute.[2] He joined Princeton University as an undergraduate student, where he earned his BSE in Computer Science. There he conducted research with Maria Klawe and David Walker.[3] Mackey was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in Computer Science (2012) and an MA in Statistics (2011).[1][4] At Berkeley, his dissertation, advised by Michael I. Jordan, included work on sparse principal components analysis (PCA) for gene expression modeling, low-rank matrix completion for recommender systems, robust matrix factorization for video surveillance, and concentration inequalities for matrices.[5] After Berkeley, he joined Stanford University, first as a postdoctoral fellow working with Emmanuel Candès and then as an assistant professor of statistics and, by courtesy, computer science. At Stanford, he created the Statistics for Social Good working group.[1]
Research and career
editIn 2016, Mackey joined Microsoft Research as a researcher and was appointed as an adjunct professor at Stanford University. He was made a principal researcher in 2019.[1]
Mackey's early work developed a method to predict progression rates of people with ALS. He used the PRO-ACT database of clinical trial data and Bayesian inference to predict disease prognosis.[1] He has also developed machine learning models for subseasonal climate and weather forecasting, to more accurately predict temperature and precipitation 2-6 weeks in advance.[1] His models outperform the operational, physics-based dynamical models used by the United States Bureau of Reclamation.[1]
Awards and honors
edit- 2003 Intel Science Talent Search 6th Place[6]
- Namesake of minor planet 15093 Lestermackey[7]
- 2006 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship[8]
- 2007 Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate Award Winner[9]
- 2007 Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize[10]
- 2009 Second Place in the $1 million Netflix Prize competition for collaborative filtering[11][12]
- 2010 Best Student Paper Award, International Conference on Machine Learning[13]
- 2012 First Place in the ALS Prediction Prize4Life Challenge for predicting Lou Gehrig's disease progression[14]
- 2019 Winner of U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Subseasonal Climate Forecast Rodeo[15]
- 2022 Elected to the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Leadership Academy[16]
- 2022 Outstanding Paper Award, NeurIPS[17]
- 2023 Ethel Newbold Prize[18]
- 2023 Elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics[19]
- 2023 MacArthur Fellowship[1]
- 2024 Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association[20]
Selected publications
edit- Luke de Oliveira; Michael Kagan; Lester Mackey; Benjamin Nachman; Ariel Schwartzman (July 2016). "Jet-images — deep learning edition". Journal of High Energy Physics. 2016 (7). arXiv:1511.05190. Bibcode:2016JHEP...07..069D. doi:10.1007/JHEP07(2016)069. ISSN 1126-6708. OSTI 1271300. S2CID 30627853. Wikidata Q123016814.
- Neil Zhenqiang Gong; Ameet Talwalkar; Lester Mackey; Ling Huang; Eui Chul Richard Shin; Emil Stefanov; Elaine (Runting) Shi; Dawn Song (April 2014). "Joint Link Prediction and Attribute Inference Using a Social-Attribute Network". ACM transactions on intelligent systems and technology. 5 (2): 1–20. doi:10.1145/2594455. ISSN 2157-6904. S2CID 7277785. Wikidata Q123016825.
- Lester W. Mackey (2009). "Deflation Methods for Sparse PCA" (PDF). Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 21. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems. Wikidata Q77680580.
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f g h "Lester Mackey". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
- ^ a b c "| Lester Mackey". Retrieved 2023-10-11.
- ^ Li, Wendy (2019-10-09). "Conversations with Maya: Lester Mackey". Society for Science. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
- ^ "Lester Mackey, Principal Researcher". microsoft.com.
- ^ Mackey, Lester (2012). Matrix Factorization and Matrix Concentration (Thesis). UC Berkeley.
- ^ "Top Teen Scientists Honored At Intel Science Talent Search". Intel. 2003-03-11. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
- ^ "(15093) Lestermackey". IAU Minor Planet Center. Retrieved 2023-10-14.
- ^ "2006 Goldwater Scholars". Goldwater Scholarship. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
- ^ "2007 Outstanding Undergraduate Award Winners". CRA. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
- ^ Stevens, Ruth (2007-02-24). "Princeton gives highest awards to top students". Princeton. Retrieved 2023-10-12.
- ^ Jackson, Dan (2017-07-07). "The Netflix Prize: How a $1 Million Contest Changed Binge-Watching Forever". Thrillist. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
- ^ Crowley, Magdalene L. (2017-07-10). "The tale of Lester Mackey's pursuit of the Netflix Prize". EECS at UC Berkeley. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
- ^ "ICML 2010 - Awards". ICML. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
- ^ Zakaib, Gwyneth (2012-11-15). "Contest Winners Offer Solutions for Tracking ALS". ALZ Forum. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
- ^ "Teams complete Bureau of Reclamation's Sub-Seasonal Climate Forecast Rodeo — outperforming the baseline forecasts". USBR. 2019-03-07. Archived from the original on 2019-09-29. Retrieved 2023-10-13.
- ^ "ASA Community". community.amstat.org. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
- ^ Chairs 2023, Communications (2022-11-21). "Announcing the NeurIPS 2022 Awards – NeurIPS Blog". Retrieved 2023-10-11.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "Bernoulli Society News". www.bernoullisociety.org. Retrieved 2023-10-11.
- ^ "Institute of Mathematical Statistics | 2023 IMS Fellows Announced". Retrieved 2023-10-11.
- ^ "ASA Fellows 2024" (PDF). American Statistical Association. Retrieved May 31, 2024.