PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Audrey Xie

Audrey Xie is a machine-learning researcher whose work spans neural-network optimization and medical image analysis. At MIT, she studied gradient-based optimizers with Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, researched machine learning and medicine with Pratik Shah, and coauthored a 2021 study of uncertainty-aware prostate-biopsy segmentation. Her optimizer paper won a NeurIPS Outstanding Paper award in 2022; she received a Barry Goldwater Scholarship for the 2023–24 academic year and earned an MIT BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2024. As of October 2026, she is a Computer Science PhD student at Stanford in John Duchi's research group.

Timeline

  1. 2020

    Gradient-based optimizer research

    In January 2020, she begins work in Jonathan Ragan-Kelley's lab at MIT on gradient-based optimizers for neural-network training.

  2. 2020–2021

    Medical machine-learning research

    From fall 2020 to fall 2021, she researches machine learning and medicine with Pratik Shah at MIT.

  3. 2021

    Prostate biopsy segmentation

    In 2021, she coauthors a paper on deep learning with uncertainty quantification to predict segmentation Dice scores in prostate cancer biopsy images.

  4. 2022

    A NeurIPS Outstanding Paper

    In 2022, Gradient Descent: The Ultimate Optimizer, coauthored by Xie, wins a NeurIPS Outstanding Paper award. Its method reduces sensitivity to gradient-descent hyperparameters by recursively optimizing hyper-hyperparameters.

  5. 2023

    A Goldwater Scholarship

    In 2023, she receives a Barry Goldwater Scholarship for the 2023–24 academic year while majoring in mathematics and computer science at MIT.

  6. 2024

    An MIT bachelor's degree

    She earns a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT in 2024.

  7. 2024

    A prostate cancer biopsy paper

    In 2024, she coauthors a paper on uncertainty-quantified prostate cancer biopsy segmentation for the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA).

  8. As of October 2026

    A Stanford computer science PhD

    She is a Computer Science PhD student at Stanford in John Duchi's research group.

Career

  1. 2020–2021Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Education

  1. 2024Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyBS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
  2. Stanford UniversityPhD in Computer Science

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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.
  3. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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 Audrey Xie yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. MIT students Rupert Li and Audrey Xie named 2023-24 Goldwater Scholars | MIT News news.mit.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. People | Pratik Shah PhD pratikfacultylab.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Deep Learning with Uncertainty Quantification for Predicting the Segmentation Dice Coefficient of Prostate Cancer Biopsy Images arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Announcing the NeurIPS 2022 Awards – NeurIPS Blog blog.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. All Publications | Pratik Shah PhD pratikfacultylab.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Students and Postdoctoral Researchers stanford.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.