PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Daniel M. Roy

Also known as Daniel Roy, Dan Roy

Daniel Roy is an AI researcher whose work spans probabilistic programming and learning theory. He coauthored Church in 2008, earned three degrees at MIT, and won the 2011 Sprowls Award for a probabilistic programming thesis. After research fellowships at Cambridge, he was an Assistant Professor of Statistics at Toronto by 2014; he presented joint PAC-Bayes work on neural networks in 2018. His 2024 paper on information complexity, memorization and learning won an ICML Best Paper award while he served as Research Director at Vector from October 2023 to December 2025. As of October 2026, he is a Visiting Researcher at Google DeepMind in London while on leave from the University of Toronto, where he is Professor of Statistics.

Timeline

  1. 2008

    Church: a generative language

    In 2008, he coauthors Church, a universal language for stochastic generative processes. The language adds a stochastic memoizer for non-parametric models and lets programs be queried exactly or approximately using Monte Carlo techniques.

  2. 2011

    MIT degrees and Sprowls award

    He earns an S.B. and M.Eng. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a PhD in Computer Science at MIT. In 2011, his thesis on probabilistic programming wins the George M. Sprowls Award, with Leslie Kaelbling as supervisor.

  3. By 2014

    Cambridge research fellowships

    By 2014, he holds a Newton International Fellowship of the Royal Society, hosted by the Machine Learning Group at the University of Cambridge, then takes a Research Fellowship at Emmanuel College. His research asks theoretical questions that connect computer science, statistics, and probability.

  4. By 2014

    Assistant professor at Toronto

    By 2014, he is an Assistant Professor of Statistics at the University of Toronto.

  5. 2018

    PAC-Bayes bounds on neural networks

    At MIT CSAIL in April 2018, he presents joint work with Gintare Karolina Dziugaite on PAC-Bayesian bounds for neural networks. The work yields the first nonvacuous generalization bounds for a large stochastic neural network on MNIST.

  6. October 2023–December 2025

    Research Director at Vector

    In October 2023, he joins Graham Taylor as Vector’s Research Co-Director and receives a two-year Research Director term. On December 31, 2025, he steps down from the role.

  7. 2024

    An ICML Best Paper award

    In 2024, he coauthors “Information Complexity of Stochastic Convex Optimization: Applications to Generalization, Memorization, and Tracing” with Idan Attias, Gintare Karolina Dziugaite, Mahdi Haghifam, and Roi Livni. The paper studies how memorization connects with learning in stochastic convex optimization and wins an ICML Best Paper award.

  8. As of October 2026

    Visiting Researcher at Google DeepMind

    As of October 2026, he is a Visiting Researcher at Google DeepMind in London and is on leave from the University of Toronto, where he is Professor of Statistics.

Career

  1. NowUniversity of TorontoAssistant Professor of Statistics
  2. NowGoogle DeepMindVisiting Researcher
  3. 2023–2025Vector InstituteResearch Co-Director
  4. University of CambridgeNewton International Fellow

Education

  1. 2011Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPhD

From the biography.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Google. 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.
  2. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Google. 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.
  3. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Google. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  4. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Google. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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  1. Church: a language for generative models proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. CSAIL Students Honored For Outstanding Doctoral Theses csail.mit.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Daniel Roy on probabilistic programming and AI intelligence.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Nonvacuous Generalization Bounds for Deep Neural Networks via PAC-Bayes | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Dan Roy named Vector Research Co-Director vectorinstitute.ai. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Daniel Roy danroy.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. ICML 2024 Awards icml.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.