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Drago Radev

In Memoriam: Dragomir Radev

YINS
March 31, 2023

Dragomir Radev, the A. Bartlett Giamatti Professor of Computer Science, and a beloved member of the SEAS community, passed away March 29.

A celebrated scholar on many subjects, Radev joined the Yale faculty in 2017 after years of accomplishments as a professor at the University of Michigan. With an overarching goal of building an infrastructure for computers and humans to interact in a fluent and natural way, Radev led novel research projects with varied experts across the Yale campus, including the Yale School of Medicine, Department of Linguistics, and the Wu Tsai Institute for Neuroscience.

“Drago was an acclaimed computer scientist, a world-renowned expert on natural language processing and artificial intelligence, and a dear friend and colleague,” said Jeffrey Brock, dean of the School of Engineering & Applied Science. “His contributions to our community, his vivacious and engaged intellect, and his kind personality will be sorely missed.”

For his groundbreaking work in the burgeoning fields of natural language processing and artificial intelligence, Radev received numerous distinctions. He was elected a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). For ten years, he served as the secretary of the ACL and was honored in 2022 with the organization’s Distinguished Service Award for his longstanding and sustained service in a variety of leadership and service roles. In addition to his professional accolades, Radev also cared deeply about students, proudly co-founding the North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition and coaching the US National Team in the International Linguistics Olympiad to numerous gold medals.

Radev was a prolific researcher, and his projects were varied and ambitious. These include his work to improve the processing of electronic health records, automated book summarization, and programming humor into natural language processing systems.

Zhong Shao, the Thomas L. Kempner Professor of Computer Science and department chair, noted that the breadth of Radev’s knowledge and interests led to his working with a numerous and diverse set of collaborators.

“Drago was an immensely innovative researcher who combined his gifts for both language and computer sciences to build an extraordinary body of research,” said Shao. “His creativity and drive helped advance his field significantly. And he was equally dedicated to his students, as shown by his instruction at Yale, where his courses were extremely popular, and his work with NACLO and the International Linguistics Olympiad.”

Radev was also a sought-after instructor. More than 200 students enrolled in his course on AI, which challenged students to build systems that can play two-player games, solve mazes, and translate texts using neural networks. At one point, he taught NLP to more than 10,000 students in a massive open online course.

The School of Engineering & Applied Science will host a celebration honoring Radev and this page will be updated when a date and location are announced. Friends and colleagues are invited to share memories on Radev’s memorial website.

Update: April 4: Radev was a devoted husband and father who loved his family unconditionally. He is survived by his wife, Axinia, and two daughters, Laura and Victoria. His daughters were the light of his life and he was incredibly proud of them both. Victoria has a disability and requires extensive care. A small group of faculty and researchers from Columbia University, Yale University, and the University of Michigan have joined forces to raise money so that Axinia and her family can continue to provide Victoria with the care she needs. Donations can be made via GoFundMe.

External link: 

 

YINS/EE Seminar: Ali Maatouk, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Ali MaatoukTitle: Optimizing Cellular Networks at Scale: The Role of Machine Learning

Event time: 
Monday, February 13, 2023 - 3:00pm
Event Type: 
Speakers, Conferneces & Workshops
Location: 
Yale Institute for Network Science See map
17 Hillhouse Ave, 3rd Floor
New Haven, CT

FDS Seminar: Alkis Kalavasis

“Efficient Algorithms and Computational Barriers in Reliable Machine Learning”  

Online only. Click here for Webcast

Speaker: Alkis Kalavasis
National Technical University of Athens 

Event time: 
Monday, December 19, 2022 - 12:30pm to 1:30pm
Event Type: 
Speakers, Conferneces & Workshops
Location: 
https://yale.zoom.us/j/92839684012 See map

FDS Seminar: Aditi Laddha

“High-Dimensional Markov Chains and Applications”    

Speaker: Aditi Laddha

Webcast.

Event time: 
Friday, December 16, 2022 - 3:00pm
Event Type: 
Speakers, Conferneces & Workshops
Location: 
https://yale.zoom.us/j/95124210485 See map

FDS Seminar: Yuchen Wu

“Fundamental Limits of Low-Rank Matrix Estimation: Information-Theoretic and Computational Perspectives”  

Speaker: Yuchen Wu
Stanford University  

Webcast

Event time: 
Friday, December 16, 2022 - 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Event Type: 
Speakers, Conferneces & Workshops
Location: 
https://yale.zoom.us/j/96639120946 See map

PhD Thesis Defense

“Stochastic Modeling and Optimization of Blockchain Networks”

Speaker: Nikolaos Papadis, Department of Electrical Engineering

The final doctoral examination for Nikolaos Papadis will take place on Monday, December 5th, at 12:00pm. The event will be in 17 Hillhouse, room 328, and will be available via Zoom (Link: https://yale.zoom.us/j/99154974208).

Members of the Committee are:
Professor Tassiulas, Professor Karbasi, & Professor Tatikonda

Event time: 
Monday, December 5, 2022 - 12:00pm
Contact email: 
Event Type: 
Speakers, Conferneces & Workshops
Location: 
Yale Institute for Network Science See map
17 Hillhouse Ave, 3rd Floor Common Area
New Haven, CT 06510

FDS Seminar

“Strong Duality in Risk-Constrained Nonconvex Functional Programming”

Speaker: Dionysis Kalogerias
Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering, Yale University

Event time: 
Wednesday, November 16, 2022 - 4:00pm
Event Type: 
Weekly Seminar
Location: 
DL220 or https://yale.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=f305254e-05d0-4ae2-b552-af4900ff67a7 See map
10 Hillhouse Ave
New Haven, CT

YINS Seminar

“Mathematical foundations for human and machine cooperation”

Speaker: Patrick Shafto
Member of the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Rutgers University - Newark

Event time: 
Wednesday, November 9, 2022 - 12:00pm
Event Type: 
Weekly Seminar
Location: 
Yale Institute for Network Science See map
17 Hillhouse Avenue, 3rd floor
New Haven, CT

Data Science Project Match

In-person event, also available via webcast.

Introduction by Daniel Spielman
Sterling Professor of Computer Science; Professor of Statistics & Data Science, and of Mathematics

Event time: 
Tuesday, December 13, 2022 - 2:00pm
Event Type: 
Speakers, Conferneces & Workshops
Location: 
Yale Institute for Network Science See map
17 Hillhouse Avenue, 3rd floor
New Haven, CT

Update: This event has been postponed until spring.

FDS Seminar

“Convex Analysis at Infinity: An Introduction to Astral Space”

Speaker: Robert Schapire
Microsoft Research

Event time: 
Wednesday, December 14, 2022 - 4:00pm
Event Type: 
Weekly Seminar
Location: 
DL220 See map
10 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT

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