Andrew Blumberg

Also known as Andrew J. Blumberg

As of October 2026, Andrew Blumberg is a Columbia professor, jointly appointed with Mathematics, and serves on First Proof’s Board of Directors. He earned a mathematics degree at Harvard and a PhD at Chicago, held a Stanford postdoctoral fellowship, and joined Columbia in 2021 after faculty roles at UT Austin. His early work included automated game design; his later research covers persistent homology, computational biology, and computer security. In 2022, he became a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society for contributions to algebraic topology, geometric data analysis, and systems security. In February 2026, he coauthored First Proof, a set of ten research-level math questions used to assess AI systems.

Now at: Columbia University and First Proof
Works: 183
Citations: 5,151
h-index: 36
Badges: Bridge

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

Timeline

1998–2005

Mathematics and game design

At Harvard, he earns an A.B. in mathematics in 1998. He and Abhi Shelat publish the AAAI paper “Searching for Stable Mechanisms: Automated Design for Imperfect Players” in 2004, and he completes a PhD at the University of Chicago in 2005.
2005–2009

Postdoctoral work at Stanford

He is an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Stanford from 2005 to 2009, with a membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2006–2007.
2008–2021

From Texas to Columbia

At UT Austin, he serves as an assistant professor from 2008 to 2014, a tenured associate professor from 2014 to 2019, and professor from 2019 to 2021. He joins Columbia as the Herbert and Florence Irving Professor in 2021.
2022

A Fellow of the AMS

He becomes a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2022 for contributions to algebraic topology, geometric data analysis, and systems security.
2023

Persistent homology at NeurIPS

He coauthors a NeurIPS 2023 paper on fast, stable representations of multiparameter persistent homology decompositions.
February 2026

Testing AI on research mathematics

He coauthors First Proof, which shares ten math questions that arose naturally during the authors’ research to assess the ability of current AI systems to answer research-level mathematics problems.
As of October 2026

Professor and First Proof board member

He is a Columbia professor jointly appointed with Mathematics and serves on First Proof’s Board of Directors. His Columbia research interests include topological and geometric data analysis, computational biology, and computer security.