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One of the world’s foremost artificial intelligence pioneers, Professor Zoubin Ghahramani FRS, has been elected as an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College in recognition of his outstanding work at Google DeepMind and in the fields of machine learning and statistics.
In 2023, Professor Ghahramani led the UK’s Independent Review of The Future of Compute, identifying 10 key recommendations for Britain to harness the power of computers to promote economic growth and address society’s greatest challenges.
In 2015, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, contributed to the Society’s Machine Learning Report in 2017, and won the 2021 Royal Society Milner Award for his fundamental contributions to computer science. Professor Ghahramani is also Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Cambridge and he recently stepped down after 16 years as an academic Fellow in Information Engineering at St John’s.
“I’m delighted to be elected an Honorary Fellow of St John’s College,” said Professor Ghahramani. “I am very grateful for the support and flexibility offered by the College in my career spanning both academic and industrial roles, during my many enjoyable years as a Fellow and I very much look forward to continuing to be part of the Johnian community in this new capacity.”
Professor Ghahramani is a world leader in the field of probabilistic machine learning and AI as well as graphical models and computational neuroscience, and has significantly advanced algorithms that can learn from data.
Before joining Google in 2020, Professor Ghahramani was Chief Scientist and Vice President for AI at Uber. He was a founding Cambridge Liaison Director of the Alan Turing Institute and founding Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. He is also co-founder of Geometric Intelligence – now named Uber AI Labs – and has advised various AI and machine learning companies.
“Few people have had as significant an impact on machine learning as Zoubin Gharahmani"
Professor Ghahramani has worked and studied at the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, the University of Toronto, the Gatsby Unit at University College London, and Carnegie Mellon University.
Master of the College, Heather Hancock, said: “Few people have had as significant an impact on machine learning as Zoubin Gharahmani, whose foundational scientific contributions developing core concepts in probabilistic modelling and Bayesian statistics underpin much of modern machine learning.
“He has combined this with exceptional research leadership to shape bold and exciting academic and commercial applications of AI in ways that are changing our world. I am delighted that Professor Gharahmani will be sustaining his deep connections with St John’s with his new status as an Honorary Fellow.”
An Honorary Fellowship is the most prestigious recognition that St John’s can bestow. Recent elections to Honorary Fellowships include eminent figures in the law, media and climate change science.
