Investigating at the interface of data science and computing

Guy Bresler, a newly-tenured associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, studies computational complexity and researches techniques to learn models from data. Credits : Photo: M. Scott Brauer - Guy Bresler builds mathematical models to understand multifaceted, interdisciplinary engineering problems that have far-reaching applications. A visual model of Guy Bresler's research would probably look something like a Venn diagram. He works at the four-way intersection where theoretical computer science, statistics, probability, and information theory collide. "There are always new things to do be done at the interface. There are always opportunities for entirely new questions to ask," says Bresler, an associate professor who recently earned tenure in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). A theoretician, he aims to understand the delicate interplay between structure in data, the complexity of models, and the amount of computation needed to learn those models.