Sattar Vakili

Appointments

2025–present
Visiting Researcher Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK
Research in AI for genomics and experimental design, focusing on probabilistic modelling, generative approaches, and lab-in-the-loop methodologies.
2023–present
Principal AI Research Manager MediaTek Research, Cambridge, UK
Leading research programmes in generative models, RL, and optimisation for communication systems and chip design. Supervising PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and interns. Contributing to strategic research planning and collaborating with academic groups.
2020–2023
Senior AI Researcher MediaTek Research, Cambridge, UK
2018–2020
Senior ML Researcher Secondmind Labs, Cambridge, UK
Director: Prof. Carl E. Rasmussen, University of Cambridge
2017–2018
Postdoctoral Research Associate Princeton University
Advisor: Prof. Mung Chiang, now President of Purdue University

Education

2017
Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering Cornell University
Minor in Applied Mathematics
Advisor: Prof. Qing Zhao
2013
M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering University of California, Davis

Professional Service & Community

Area Chair: ICML 2026, EMNLP 2025
Reviewer: NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, AISTATS, COLT, AAAI, JMLR, TMLR, ALT, IEEE journals and conferences. NeurIPS Top Reviewer (2020, 2021). Session Chair, COLT 2021 (RL and Bandits).
Chair: Pre-ICML London Meetup 2025, with UCL and ELLIS
Co-organiser: Pre-ICML London Meetup 2024, with UCL and ELLIS
Sponsorship: Lead MediaTek sponsorship of NeurIPS@Cambridge 2024
Organiser: Trends in AI Theory Seminar Series (2021–2023), with National Taiwan University
Industrial Endorsement: EPSRC CDT in Statistics and Machine Learning (StatML), Imperial & Oxford; AIM-ONE: AI Methodologies in Biosciences for One Health, UCL; AI Hub in RL Foundations, Imperial College London

Tutorials, Seminars & Teaching

Dec 2025
Foundation Models for Communication Systems Tutorial, IEEE GLOBECOM, Taipei
Oct 2025
Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: AI with Human-in-the-Loop Perspective Invited Talk, Causal AI for Policy and Practice Workshop, Oxford University
Jul 2024
Recent Advances in Statistical Reinforcement Learning Tutorial, UAI 2024, Barcelona
Jointly with Prof. Yuejie Chi (Yale) and Prof. Gergely Neu (Pompeu Fabra)
Mar 2025
AI and Communication Tech Talk, University of Cambridge
Feb 2025
Kernel-based Reinforcement Learning OxCSML Seminar, Oxford University
Dec 2024
AI for Shahnama Cambridge University Shahnama Centre
Sep 2024
Confidence Intervals for Sequential Decision-Making Invited Lecture, Fundamentals of Statistical Machine Learning, UCL
2023
Seminars on RL and Bandits DeepMind/ELLIS CSML Seminar; London Symposium on Information Theory; Inria Scool, University of Lille; FeDucation Seminar, Florida International University
2021–2023
Trends in AI Theory Seminar Series Organiser, with National Taiwan University (recordings available online)
2016–2017
Head Teaching Assistant: Signals and Information Cornell University

Supervision & Mentoring

Jasmine Bayrooti (PhD, University of Cambridge)
Led to NeurIPS 2025 publication
Aya Kayal (Research Intern, MediaTek; PhD student, UCL)
Led to AISTATS 2025 and ICML 2025 publications
Current position: Assistant Professor, American University of Beirut
Julia Olkhovskaya (Postdoctoral Researcher, VU Amsterdam)
Led to NeurIPS 2023, NeurIPS 2024, and ALT 2024 publications
Current position: Assistant Professor, TU Delft
Amitis Shidani (PhD, University of Oxford)
Led to ALT 2024 publication
Current position: AI Researcher, Apple
Sudeep Salgia (PhD, Cornell University)
Led to Allerton 2019, ICML 2020, NeurIPS 2021, ICML 2023, and IEEE TSP 2023 publications
Current position: AI Researcher, Meta
Sing-Yuan Yeh, Fu-Chieh Chang, Chang-Wei Yueh (MSc students, National Taiwan University)
Led to AISTATS 2023 publication
Danyal Ahmed (Research Intern, MediaTek; University of Cambridge)
Led to ICML 2023 (Oral) publication
Clémence Réda (PhD, Paris 13 / Paris Cité)
Led to NeurIPS 2022 (Oral) publication
Current position: Researcher, CNRS–IBENS
Nacime Bouziani (Research Intern, MediaTek; Imperial College London)
Led to NeurIPS 2021 publication
Current position: AI Scientist, Amazon
Ayman Boustati (Research Intern, Secondmind; University of Warwick)
Led to UAI 2020 publication and patent application
Xiao Xu (PhD, Cornell University)
Led to IEEE TNSE 2019 publication