Léon Bottou
Léon Bottou is a machine-learning researcher whose work spans neural-network software, stochastic-gradient methods, document compression, and large-scale learning. He studied engineering, mathematics, and computer science in France, then worked at Bell Labs, AT&T Labs, NEC Labs America, Microsoft, and Facebook AI Research. His work includes the SN neural-network simulator and the DjVu document-compression system. With Olivier Bousquet, he shared the 2018 NeurIPS Test of Time Award for research on large-scale learning; he also received the 2007 Blavatnik Award and 2021 Lagrange Prize. Since February 2026, he has been a visiting scholar at the Flatiron Institute.
- Now at
- Simons Foundation
- Works
- 264
- Citations
- 126,893
- h-index
- 71
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1987–1992
Learning to model networks
He earned degrees in engineering, mathematics, and computer science in France, including a computer-science PhD in 1991. With Yann LeCun, he published SN, a simulator for artificial neural networks, in 1988. He began his career at Bell Laboratories, studying local-learning algorithms, then founded Neuristique in France.
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1995–2002
Compressing the written word
In 1995, he returned to Bell Laboratories and developed methods for handwriting recognition and OCR. At AT&T Labs, he worked on the DjVu image-compression system.
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2002–2010
Learning at larger scale
At NEC Labs America in Princeton, he researched large-scale machine learning and stochastic gradient descent.
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2007
An award for learning at scale
The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists named him a 2007 Regional Award Winner in its faculty category. They recognized his work on DjVu document compression and stochastic-gradient algorithms for large-scale machine learning.
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2010–February 2026
Research at Microsoft and Facebook
At Microsoft, he joined adCenter in 2010 and became a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in 2012. He joined Facebook AI Research in March 2015 and worked there through February 2026, with research on large-scale learning and causal inference.
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2018
A test of time for SGD
With Olivier Bousquet, he received the NeurIPS 2018 Test of Time Award for their 2007 paper, “The Trade-Offs of Large Scale Learning.” It examined how data and computing power interact in large-scale machine learning.
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2021
A prize for optimization
He received the 2021 Lagrange Prize in Continuous Optimization.
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Since February 2026
A new home at Flatiron
He is a visiting scholar in machine learning at the Flatiron Institute, working jointly between CCM and CCN.
Sources and credits
Photo: Xuthoria, via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: commons.wikimedia.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
- Event Details - Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
- Léon Bottou - Wikipedia
- From the Frontline of the Research on Machine Learning in the US | NEC
- Léon Bottou | Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists
- Test of Time award to Leon Bottou, Olivier Bousquet - Engineering at Meta
- start [leon.bottou.org]
- The NeurIPS 2018 Test of Time Award: The Trade-Offs of Large Scale Learning
- Machine Learning and Computational Statistics in CCM