PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Kevin Ellis

Kevin Ellis is a computer scientist whose AI work explores how machines learn to write programs and reuse symbolic knowledge. He coauthored the program-synthesis systems DreamCoder and Write, Execute, Assess, completed a cognitive science PhD at MIT, and joined Cornell's computer science faculty. In 2024, he received an NSF CAREER Award to develop methods for symbolic learning, and his Cornell team won the ARC Prize's first-place paper award for a visual reasoning system. He and Saikat Dutta received a Meta grant in 2025 to build software development benchmarks. As of October 2026, he is an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell and continues research in program synthesis.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 2015–2019

    Program synthesis and a REPL

    In 2015, he coauthors “Unsupervised Learning by Program Synthesis,” which combines probabilistic modeling with solver-based synthesis for visual learning and English morphology. In 2019, he coauthors “Write, Execute, Assess,” a neural program synthesis system that uses execution to search the space of possible programs.

  2. 2020

    A cognitive science PhD

    In 2020, he completes a PhD in cognitive science at MIT under Armando Solar-Lezama and Josh Tenenbaum. He also holds a B.S. in physics with a concentration in linguistics.

  3. 2020

    DreamCoder learns program languages

    In 2020, he coauthors DreamCoder, a system that learns to solve problems by writing programs. It creates programming languages for domain concepts and uses neural networks to guide program search.

  4. 2020–2021

    From Common Sense Machines to Cornell

    In September 2020, he is a research scientist at Common Sense Machines. In fall 2021, he moves to Cornell as an assistant professor of computer science, where his work includes program induction, model-structure learning, neurosymbolic methods and semantic parsing.

  5. 2024

    An NSF CAREER Award

    In 2024, he receives an NSF CAREER Award to develop AI methods that learn symbolic knowledge as computer code by combining statistics, large language models and program synthesis.

  6. 2024

    A first-place ARC paper

    In 2024, he coauthors “Combining Induction and Transduction for Abstract Reasoning” with his Cornell team; the paper wins the ARC Prize first-place paper award. Its two-model method combines program search with direct answer prediction and solves about 56% of the visual puzzles. Lead authors Wen-Ding Li and Keya Hu share the competition's $50,000 prize.

  7. 2025

    Benchmarks for AI software

    In 2025, he and Saikat Dutta receive a Meta grant to build benchmarks for generative AI in software development, including bug fixing, code review, test generation and programming-language translation.

  8. As of October 2026

    Assistant professor at Cornell

    In June 2026, he is an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell and serves on the AI4AI research team. The initiative develops safety protocols for AI agents and their code. His research combines program synthesis with learning and reasoning from machine learning and cognitive science.

Career

  1. Since 2021Cornell UniversityAssistant Professor of Computer Science
  2. 2020–2021Common Sense MachinesResearch Scientist

Education

  1. 2020Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPhD

From the biography.

Videos

YouTube videos in which Kevin Ellis speaks or appears, newest first. A model chose them from YouTube search results. List updated 22 October 2026.

  1. Why Program Synthesis Is Next (Kevin Ellis and Zenna Tavares)Machine Learning Street Talk · 8 April 2025 · 1 h 17 min
  2. Exploring Program Synthesis: Francois Chollet, Kevin Ellis, Zenna TavaresMachine Learning Street Talk · 23 March 2025 · 32 min

Video data from YouTube API Services. By watching you agree to the YouTube Terms of Service. How we use YouTube data.

  1. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Cornell University. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Cornell 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.
  3. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes Cornell University. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Cornell University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.

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 Kevin Ellis yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Unsupervised Learning by Program Synthesis papers.nips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Write, Execute, Assess: Program Synthesis with a REPL arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Kevin Ellis | Department of Computer Science | Cornell Bowers cs.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Events neurosymbolic.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. DreamCoder: Growing generalizable, interpretable knowledge with wake-sleep Bayesian program learning arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Cornell Bowers CIS welcomes 13 faculty members news.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Eight early-career professors win NSF development awards news.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Cornell team wins $50K in AI puzzle-solving challenge contest cs.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Dutta and Ellis to advance AI coding with grant from Meta cs.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Amazon partnership establishes Cornell AI security initiative news.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. The Research Team | AI4AI assuredintegrity.ai.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.