PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Arno Solin

Arno Solin is a machine-learning researcher whose group develops probabilistic and data-efficient methods for AI. Growing up in Turku, he built robots, earned engineering degrees at Aalto, and joined its faculty in 2018 after work in industry and postdoctoral research. His research includes reduced-rank Gaussian processes, Bayes–Newton inference, and DeSplat, which separates distractors from static scenes. ELLIS appointed him a Scholar in 2021, and AI Finland named him AI Researcher of the Year in 2024. Since June 2026, he serves as Vice Head of Research at Aalto and cohosts a podcast about AI with Eric Malmi.

Timeline

  1. 2011–2016

    Turku robots and Aalto degrees

    Growing up in Turku, he becomes interested in technology, physics, and mathematics and builds robots. He earns bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering and technology at Aalto in 2011 and 2012, then a doctorate there in 2016. His research focuses on uncertainty quantification, robustness, and scalable inference.

  2. 2014

    Reduced-rank Gaussian processes

    In 2014, he and Simo Särkkä propose reduced-rank Gaussian-process regression using eigenfunctions of the Laplace operator. This approximation makes inference scale more efficiently with growing data.

  3. 2018

    Joining Aalto faculty

    In 2018, he joins Aalto as an Assistant Professor. Before the appointment, he works in industry and holds an Academy of Finland postdoctoral fellowship.

  4. 2021

    An ELLIS Scholar

    In 2021, ELLIS appoints him a Scholar in Theory, Algorithms and Computations of Modern Learning Systems.

  5. 2023

    Bayes–Newton inference

    In 2023, he coauthors a JMLR paper with William Wilkinson and Simo Särkkä that casts approximate Bayesian inference methods as Newton-style optimization. Its algorithms guarantee positive-semidefinite covariance matrices.

  6. 2024

    AI Researcher of the Year

    AI Finland names him AI Researcher of the Year in 2024.

  7. 2025

    DeSplat at CVPR

    In 2025, he coauthors DeSplat, a CVPR paper on 3D Gaussian splatting. The method separates distractors from static scene elements using volume rendering of Gaussian primitives.

  8. Since June 2026

    Vice Head of Research

    Since June 2026, he serves as Vice Head of Aalto's Department of Computer Science, with responsibility for research. He is a tenured Associate Professor of Machine Learning and Principal Investigator at ELLIS Institute Finland, where he leads a group working on data-efficient and probabilistic machine learning for AI. In August 2026, he and Eric Malmi begin hosting Aalto's Ja ihminen loi älyn podcast, interviewing AI researchers and entrepreneurs about the field.

Career

  1. Since 2018Aalto UniversityAssistant Professor, Vice Head of Research
  2. NowELLIS Institute FinlandPrincipal Investigator

Education

  1. 2016Aalto UniversityDoctorate
  2. 2012Aalto UniversityMaster's degree
  3. 2011Aalto UniversityBachelor's degree

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 Aalto University. 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. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes Aalto University. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Aalto University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Aalto University. 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.

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 Arno Solin yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Machine learning excited me before I knew it was a thing | Aalto University aalto.fi. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Arno Solin - Aalto University's research portal research.aalto.fi. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Hilbert Space Methods for Reduced-Rank Gaussian Process Regression arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Arno Solin users.aalto.fi. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Bayes–Newton Methods for Approximate Bayesian Inference with PSD Guarantees jmlr.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. DeSplat: Decomposed Gaussian Splatting for Distractor-Free Rendering openaccess.thecvf.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Uusi podcast valottaa tekoälyn syviä suomalaisia juuria | Aalto-yliopisto aalto.fi. Checked 20 October 2026.