PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Alexander Rush

Also known as Sasha Rush, Alexander M. Rush

As of October 2026, Alexander Rush is an ML researcher and blogger, and he was previously a professor at Cornell and Harvard. He completed an A.B. at Harvard in 2007 and a Ph.D. at MIT in 2014, and he joined Harvard's engineering school in 2015 after a postdoc at Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research. He won a 2021 Sloan Research Fellowship and an NSF Career Award, and he helped found COLM. In 2023 he co-authored Scaling Data-Constrained Language Models, one of NeurIPS's award-winning papers. He left Cursor in August 2026, after helping out on Composer.

Timeline

  1. 2007–2014

    Degrees from Harvard and MIT

    He earns an A.B. in computer science at Harvard in 2007 and a Ph.D. at MIT in 2014.

  2. 2015

    Joining Harvard's engineering school

    He joins Harvard's engineering school in 2015, after a postdoc at Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research in New York.

  3. 2021

    A Sloan Research Fellowship

    He wins a 2021 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. His work also receives an NSF Career Award.

  4. 2023

    An award-winning NeurIPS paper

    In 2023 NeurIPS announces its award-winning papers, and he co-authors Scaling Data-Constrained Language Models, one of the winners.

  5. 2024

    Hugging Face and COLM

    In 2024 he is an associate professor at Cornell Tech and a researcher at Hugging Face. He helps found COLM and serves as its president.

  6. August 2026

    Leaving Cursor

    In August 2026 he announces his last day at Cursor, after helping out on Composer.

  7. As of October 2026

    An ML researcher and blogger

    He is an ML researcher, programmer, and blogger, following earlier professorships at Cornell and Harvard.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Alexander Rush awarded NSF CAREER grant seas.harvard.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. Agarwal, Rush, Tschida, Udell win Sloan Fellowships as.cornell.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. Sasha Rush simons.berkeley.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. Announcing the NeurIPS 2023 Paper Awards – NeurIPS Blog blog.neurips.cc. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. Scaling Data-Constrained Language Models proceedings.neurips.cc. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. The NeurIPS 2023 Paper Awards honor researchers working on the LUMI supercomputer's massive AMD GPU resources - LUMI lumi-supercomputer.eu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  7. ICLR Mentorship Sasha Rush iclr.cc. Checked 14 October 2026.
  8. Sasha Rush Departs Cursor After Composer Work · Digg digg.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  9. Main · Rush NLP rush-nlp.com. Checked 14 October 2026.