Jacob Steinhardt
Department of Mathematics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
jsteinha@csail.mit.edu
[Curriculum Vitae] [Research Statement]

I am a senior at MIT majoring in mathematics and working in the Computational Cognitive Science Group (I also previously worked in the Robot Locomotion Group). I am interested in artificial intelligence as an engineering problem: how can we synthesize human-level intelligence, and how can we ensure that intelligent agents perform the tasks that we want them to? The answers to these questions come from such diverse fields as machine learning, computational neuroscience, cognitive science, complexity theory, and philosophy. Right now I am focusing on what machine learning and the theory of computation can tell us about the nature of intelligence. I am particularly interested in developing principled ways to perform statistical modeling and inference under computational constraints.

I am a coach for the USA Computing Olympiad and an instructor at the Summer Program on Applied Rationality and Cognition. I also like to play Ultimate Frisbee.

Publications

Jacob Steinhardt and Zoubin Ghahramani
Pathological Properties of Deep Bayesian Hierarchies
2011 NIPS Workshop on Bayesian Nonparametrics
[Poster Abstract] [Poster]

Jacob Steinhardt and Zoubin Ghahramani
Flexible Martingale Priors for Deep Hierarchies
AISTATS 2012
[Paper] [Slides]

Jacob Steinhardt and Russ Tedrake
Finite-Time Regional Verification of Stochastic Nonlinear Systems
Robotics: Science and Systems, 2011
Best Student Paper Finalist
[Conference Paper and Errata] [Journal Paper] [Slides] [Poster]

Jacob Steinhardt
Permutations with Ascending and Descending Blocks
Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 17:R14
[Paper] [Slides]

Jacob Steinhardt
On Coloring the Odd-Distance Graph
Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 16:N12
[Paper]

Jacob Steinhardt
Cayley Graphs Formed by Conjugate Generating Sets of S_n
3rd Place in 2007 Siemens Competition
[Paper]

Links

Academically Interesting. My blog.
GiveWell. Detailed analysis of charities together with a list of the best charities in each area.
MIT Educational Studies Program. MIT students teaching high school students.
LessWrong. A forum devoted to improved decision making and optimal philanthropy.
USA Computing Olympiad. Computer science contest for high school students.
Harvard-MIT Math Tournament. Math contest for high school students.
American Mathematics Competition. Math contest for high school students.

Great Classes

This is a shortlist of MIT classes that I've taken that are both theoretically interesting and practically useful, and that are well-taught with good problem sets. I've included the professor as well, since professors change from time to time.