PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Kenji Kawaguchi

Kenji Kawaguchi is an AI researcher whose work studies deep learning theory and optimization. He earned an S.M. in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT in 2016, completed a computer science Ph.D. in 2020, and served as a Harvard postdoctoral fellow. Since 2021, he has been a Presidential Young Professor in the NUS Department of Computer Science. In 2024, he and his coauthors received the NeurIPS Best Paper Award for the Stochastic Taylor Derivative Estimator.

Works
412
Citations
8,679
h-index
41

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 15 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2016

    An MIT master's degree

    He earns an S.M. in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT in 2016.

  2. 2016

    Deep learning without poor local minima

    In 2016, he proves that every local minimum of a deep nonlinear network's expected loss is global under an independence assumption.

  3. 2020

    A doctorate and a Harvard postdoc

    He completes a Ph.D. in computer science at MIT in 2020. He then joins Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow.

  4. 2020

    Ordered SGD

    In 2020, he and Haihao Lu introduce Ordered SGD, which biases its gradient estimator toward observations with higher current losses.

  5. Since 2021

    A professorship at NUS

    In 2021, he joins the NUS Department of Computer Science as a Presidential Young Professor.

  6. 2024

    A NeurIPS Best Paper Award

    In 2024, he and his coauthors win the NeurIPS Best Paper Award for the Stochastic Taylor Derivative Estimator.

  7. As of October 2026

    Professor at NUS

    As of October 2026, he is a Presidential Young Professor in the Department of Computer Science at NUS.

Sources and credits

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  1. Kenji Kawaguchi ml.comp.nus.edu.sg. Checked 15 October 2026.
  2. Deep Learning without Poor Local Minima proceedings.neurips.cc. Checked 15 October 2026.
  3. Kenji Kawaguchi - Harvard University people.csail.mit.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  4. Kenji KAWAGUCHI - NUS Computing comp.nus.edu.sg. Checked 15 October 2026.
  5. Ordered SGD: A New Stochastic Optimization Framework for Empirical Risk Minimization proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 15 October 2026.
  6. PhD program and postdoc position in CS at NUS people.csail.mit.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  7. NUS Presidential Young Professor Kenji Kawaguchi wins Best Paper Award at NeurIPS 2024 news.nus.edu.sg. Checked 15 October 2026.
  8. Information for incoming NUS CS PhD students comp.nus.edu.sg. Checked 15 October 2026.