PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Jean Pouget-Abadie

Also known as John

Jean Pouget-Abadie is a co-author of Generative Adversarial Nets, the 2014 paper that proposed training a generative model and a discriminative model against each other, and a researcher in causal inference and experimental design. After an undergraduate degree at École Polytechnique in Paris, he worked with Yoshua Bengio at MILA in Montreal in 2014 and finished a Harvard computer science PhD in 2018 as a Siebel Scholar. From 2018 to 2026 he was a researcher at Google, where he worked with Vahab Mirrokni on experiments and causal inference. NeurIPS gave Generative Adversarial Nets a Test of Time Paper Award in 2024. He is a Senior Staff Research Scientist on the Gemini Large Scale Pretraining team at Google DeepMind in New York.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2011–2014

    Studies at École Polytechnique

    From 2011 to 2014, he studies at École Polytechnique in Paris for the diplôme d'ingénieur. His undergraduate degree there is in mathematics.

  2. 2014

    Generative Adversarial Nets at MILA

    In 2014, he works on deep learning with Yoshua Bengio at MILA, Université de Montréal. With Ian Goodfellow, Bengio and five other co-authors, he writes Generative Adversarial Nets for NIPS 2014, which proposes training a generative model and a discriminative model together as a minimax two-player game.

  3. 2014–2018

    A Harvard computer science PhD

    He enters the computer science PhD program at Harvard in 2014, advised by Edoardo Airoldi and Salil Vadhan. His research there covers causal inference with network interference, and he interns on the Core Data Science team at Facebook in 2015 and on the Discover Weekly music recommendation team at Spotify in 2017. His 2018 dissertation is Dealing with Interference on Experimentation Platforms.

  4. 2018

    A Siebel Scholar award

    He is one of five Harvard SEAS computer science graduate students named 2018 Siebel Scholars, each receiving a $35,000 award for the final year of graduate studies.

  5. 2018–2026

    Researcher at Google

    He joins Google in 2018 as a researcher in the algorithms research group, working with Vahab Mirrokni in New York. He leads a small research team within the Algorithms & Optimization group of Google Research, with interests in algorithms and statistics and a focus on causal inference.

  6. 2019–2022

    Bipartite experiments at NeurIPS

    In 2019, he co-authors Variance reduction of bipartite experiments through Correlation Clustering for NeurIPS with Kevin Aydin, Warren Schudy, Kay Brodersen and Vahab Mirrokni. In 2022, he co-authors Cluster Randomized Designs for One-Sided Bipartite Experiments with Jennifer Brennan and Mirrokni for NeurIPS.

  7. 2024

    A Test of Time Paper Award

    NeurIPS awards two Test of Time papers in 2024, one of them Generative Adversarial Nets, which he co-authored. The announcement cites more than 85,000 citations of the paper and calls it one of the foundational pieces for generative modeling.

  8. Since 2026

    Gemini pretraining at DeepMind

    In 2026, he becomes a Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind in New York. He works with Paul Michel on the Gemini Large Scale Pretraining team.

Career

  1. Since 2026Google DeepMindSenior Staff Research Scientist
  2. 2018–2026Google ResearchResearcher
  3. 2017SpotifyIntern
  4. 2015MetaIntern
  5. 2014Mila

Education

  1. 2018Harvard UniversityPhD
  2. 2014École PolytechniqueDiplôme d'ingénieur

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

Photo: We have no published photo of Jean Pouget-Abadie yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Jean Pouget-Abadie jean.pouget-abadie.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Five computer science graduate students named 2018 Siebel Scholars seas.harvard.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Generative Adversarial Nets proceedings.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Jean Pouget-Abadie research.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Announcing the NeurIPS 2024 Test of Time Paper Awards blog.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.