Caroline Uhler (born 1983) is a Swiss statistician working in the field of

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

and applications in

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

. Her research focuses on developing methods for causal inference to infer regulatory relationships from different data modalities (transcriptomic, proteomic, structural, etc.). She is a Full Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems and Society at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. In addition, she is a Core Institute Member of the

Broad Institute The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard (IPA: , pronunciation respelling: ), often referred to as the Broad Institute, is a biomedical and genomic research center located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, U ...

, where she co-directs the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center.

Education and career

Uhler was born in Switzerland. She studied mathematics and biology at the

University of Zurich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...

, earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 2004, and a second bachelor's degree in biology and master's degree in mathematics in 2006. She stayed at the university for a credential as a high school mathematics teacher in 2007, but instead of becoming a teacher she traveled to the US for graduate education at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. There, she earned both a Ph.D. in statistics and a degree in management of technology from the

Haas School of Business The Walter A. Haas School of Business, also known as Berkeley Haas, is the business school of the University of California, Berkeley, a public research university in Berkeley, California. It was the first business school at a public university i ...

in 2011. Her doctoral dissertation, ''Geometry of maximum likelihood estimation in Gaussian graphical models'', was supervised by

Bernd Sturmfels Bernd Sturmfels (born March 28, 1962 in Kassel, West Germany) is a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley and is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig sin ...

, an algebraic geometer and algebraic statistician. She became an assistant professor at the

Institute of Science and Technology Austria The Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) is an international research institute in natural and mathematical sciences, located in Maria Gugging, Klosterneuburg, 20 km northwest of the Austrian capital of Vienna. It was establish ...

in 2011, taking leaves in 2012 for postdoctoral research at

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

and in 2013 for a semester-length return visit to Berkeley as a research fellow. She moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015 as Henry L. and Grace Doherty Assistant Professor in 2015, and was promoted to associate professor in 2018 and to full professor in 2022. Since 2022, Uhler is also a Core Institute Member at the Broad Institute, where she co-directs the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center.https://www.ericandwendyschmidtcenter.org/about/leadership

Recognition

Uhler has received multiple prestigious career prizes: In 2014, Uhler became an elected member of the

International Statistical Institute The International Statistical Institute (ISI) is a professional association of statisticians. It was founded in 1885, although there had been international statistical congresses since 1853. The institute has about 4,000 elected members from gov ...

. In 2015, she was a winner of the

Start-Preis The Start-Preis is the highest Austrian award for young scientists. It is awarded once per year by the Austrian Science Fund on behalf of the Austrian Ministry for Science. It is endowed with up to 1.2 million Euro for a proposed research projec ...

of the

Austrian Science Fund The Austrian Science Fund (german: Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, FWF) is the most important Austrian funding organization for basic research. The FWF supports research in science, engineering, and the humanities through a ...

, and of the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award of the

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (german: Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung) is a foundation established by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany and funded by the Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry of Education and Resear ...

, but declined the funding from both awards to move to MIT. In 2017, Uhler received the

NSF Career Award The National Science Foundation CAREER awards, presented by the National Science Foundation (NSF), are in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through research and education, and the integration of these endeavors i ...

and the

Sloan Research Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

. In 2019, Uhler became a

Simons Investigator The Simons Foundation is a private foundation established in 1994 by Marilyn and Jim Simons with offices in New York City. As one of the largest charitable organizations in the US with assets of over $5 billion in 2022, the foundation's mission ...

in Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems, and in 2022, she received the

NIH Director's New Innovator Award National Institutes of Health Director's New Innovator Award is a research initiative first announced in 2007 designed to supports exceptionally creative, early-career investigators who propose innovative, high-impact projects. The focus is specif ...

References

External links

Home page
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Uhler, Caroline Living people American women statisticians Swiss statisticians University of Zurich alumni Haas School of Business alumni MIT School of Engineering faculty Academic staff of ETH Zurich Elected Members of the International Statistical Institute 1983 births 21st-century American women Mathematical statisticians Machine learning researchers Women statisticians