PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Adrien Taylor

Adrien Taylor is an optimization researcher whose work spans first-order methods, numerical analysis and machine learning. He completed a PhD in mathematical engineering at UCLouvain in 2017 and worked with Francis Bach as a postdoctoral researcher in SIERRA from 2017 to 2019. His coauthored work on continuized acceleration won a 2021 NeurIPS Outstanding Paper Award, and he received a 2024 ERC Starting Grant for CASPER, a project to certify numerical optimization algorithms. In 2025, he was an Inria researcher in SIERRA and chaired a cluster at EUROPT; as of October 2026, he is a research scientist in Inria's Thoth team in Grenoble.

Now at
Inria
Links
Website, Google Scholar, X and GitHub

Timeline

  1. 2017

    A PhD on first-order methods

    He completes a PhD in mathematical engineering at UCLouvain in 2017 under François Glineur and Julien Hendrickx. His dissertation is titled Convex Interpolation and Performance Estimation of First-order Methods for Convex Optimization.

  2. 2017–2019

    Postdoctoral researcher in SIERRA

    He works with Francis Bach as a postdoctoral researcher in the SIERRA team from 2017 to 2019.

  3. 2021

    A NeurIPS paper award

    He coauthors “Continuized Accelerations of Deterministic and Stochastic Gradient Descents, and of Gossip Algorithms” with seven researchers; the paper wins a NeurIPS 2021 Outstanding Paper Award. It develops a continuous-time variant of Nesterov acceleration.

  4. October 2023

    Researcher at Inria Paris

    In October 2023, he joins the SIERRA team at Inria Paris as a researcher.

  5. 2024

    An ERC grant for CASPER

    He receives a 2024 ERC Starting Grant for CASPER, a project that develops computer-aided certification for numerical optimization algorithms and aims to improve their reliability. The project runs from fall 2024 to fall 2029.

  6. 2025

    Inria researcher with HDR

    He is an Inria researcher with HDR in the SIERRA team in 2025.

  7. 2025

    Cluster chair at EUROPT

    He chairs a cluster at EUROPT 2025.

  8. As of October 2026

    Research scientist in Thoth

    As of October 2026, he is a research scientist at Inria in the Thoth team in Grenoble after about nine years in SIERRA, where he becomes a permanent researcher. His research focuses on first-order optimization and numerical analysis with some machine learning; he supervises research on parallel and stochastic numerical optimization.

Career

  1. Since 2017InriaPostdoctoral researcher, Researcher

Education

  1. 2017UCLouvainPhD

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Adrien Taylor. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes Inria. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Inria. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Inria. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Adrien Taylor yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Research webpage of Adrien Taylor adrientaylor.github.io. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. publications | Research webpage of Adrien Taylor adrientaylor.github.io. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. NeurIPS 2021 Awards neurips.cc. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Announcing the NeurIPS 2021 Award Recipients – NeurIPS Blog blog.neurips.cc. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. SIERRA - 2023 - Rapport annuel d'activité radar.inria.fr. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Adrien Taylor Awarded ERC Starting Grant For The Casper Project - Prairie prairie-psai.fr. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. SIERRA - 2025 - Rapport annuel d'activité radar.inria.fr. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. 2026-10548 - Post-Doctoral Research Visit F/M Postdoc in parallel numerical optimization and statistical machine learning recrutement.inria.fr. Checked 20 October 2026.