Sattar Vakili is Principal AI Research Manager at MediaTek Research, the research arm of MediaTek — a globally leading semiconductor company. His research focuses on sequential decision-making under uncertainty, with expertise in optimization, bandits and reinforcement learning, kernel-based modelling, and neural networks.
Before joining MediaTek, Sattar worked at Secondmind, a Cambridge-based research lab directed by Professor Carl Rasmussen, where he developed methods for kernel and Gaussian process models. Earlier, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. He received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering (minor in Applied Mathematics) from Cornell University in 2017, under the supervision of Professor Qing Zhao, with a dissertation on sequential methods for learning and optimization.
Research Experience
- 2023–present: Principal AI Research Manager at MediaTek Research, Cambridge, UK.
- 2020–2023: Senior AI Researcher at MediaTek Research, Cambridge, UK.
- 2018–2020: Senior Machine Learning Researcher at Secondmind Labs, Cambridge, UK (Director: Professor Carl Rasmussen, University of Cambridge).
- 2017–2018: Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University (Advisor: Professor Mung Chiang).
Education
- 2017: Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering with a Minor Degree in Applied Mathemathics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Advisor: Professor Qing Zhao.
- 2013: M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Davis, CA.
- 2011: B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.