PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Madeleine Udell

Madeleine Udell is an associate professor at Stanford University who develops machine learning methods for data preprocessing, interpretability and causality. She studied mathematics and physics at Yale, completed a Stanford doctorate in 2015, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech before joining Cornell in 2016. Her work on generalized low rank models extended principal components analysis to tables with mixed data types and missing values. She received a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2021 and returned to Stanford in 2022. Her 2024 OptiMUS paper describes translating written optimization problems into models and code; her 2025 PDE-SHARP paper describes generating solvers for partial differential equations.

Works
146
Citations
2,919
h-index
27

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2009

    Mathematics and physics at Yale

    She earns a BS in mathematics and physics at Yale University in 2009.

  2. 2014

    Generalized low rank models

    In 2014, Udell coauthors Generalized Low Rank Models with Corinne Horn, Reza Zadeh and Stephen Boyd. The method extends principal components analysis to tables that mix numerical, Boolean, categorical and ordinal data, and fills missing entries.

  3. 2015–2016

    Stanford doctorate and Caltech fellowship

    She completes a PhD in Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford in 2015 under Stephen Boyd. In 2015–2016, she works as a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech's Center for the Mathematics of Information, hosted by Joel Tropp.

  4. 2016

    Assistant professor at Cornell

    She joins Cornell as an assistant professor of operations research and information engineering and Richard and Sybil Smith Sesquicentennial Fellow in 2016. Her research focuses on optimization and machine learning for large data sets, with applications in marketing, medical informatics and engineering system design.

  5. 2020

    NSF and ONR awards

    In 2020, she receives a National Science Foundation CAREER award and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award.

  6. 2021

    A Sloan Research Fellowship

    Udell receives an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2021. She plans to study how low rank structure can improve clustering and model interpretability, guide measurements and accelerate machine learning and optimization.

  7. 2022

    Assistant professor at Stanford

    She joins Stanford's Department of Management Science and Engineering as an assistant professor in 2022, with an affiliation in the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering. Her research examines how data structure can speed up machine learning and how missing values affect predictions.

  8. 2024

    OptiMUS models optimization problems

    In 2024, she coauthors OptiMUS: Scalable Optimization Modeling with (MI)LP Solvers and Large Language Models with Ali AhmadiTeshnizi and Wenzhi Gao. The agent turns natural language descriptions into linear or mixed integer linear programming problems, writes and debugs solver code, and evaluates solutions.

  9. 2025

    PDE-SHARP generates numerical solvers

    She coauthors PDE-SHARP: PDE Solver Hybrids through Analysis and Refinement Passes with Shaghayegh Fazliani in 2025. The framework uses large language models to analyze partial differential equations, generate numerical solvers and refine their code.

  10. As of October 2026

    Associate professor at Stanford

    In July 2026, she receives tenure at Stanford. As of October 2026, she is Associate Professor of Management Science and Engineering, with a courtesy appointment in Electrical Engineering. Her machine learning work addresses data preprocessing, interpretability and causality.

Career

  1. Since 2022Stanford UniversityAffiliation in the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering
  2. NowStanford UniversityAssociate Professor of Management Science and Engineering
  3. NowStanford UniversityAssociate Professor by courtesy
  4. From 2022Stanford UniversityAssistant Professor
  5. From 2016Cornell UniversityAssistant Professor of Operations Research and Information Engineering and Richard and Sybil Smith Sesquicentennial Fellow
  6. 2015–2016California Institute of TechnologyPostdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Mathematics of Information
  7. Cornell UniversityAssociate Professor of Operations Research and Information Engineering and Richard and Sybil Smith Sesquicentennial Fellow

Education

  1. 2015Stanford UniversityPhD in Computational and Mathematical Engineering
  2. 2009Yale UniversityBS in mathematics and physics

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Checked career sources: profiles.stanford.edu, msande.stanford.edu, web.stanford.edu.

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 Madeleine Udell yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Madeleine Udell's Profile | Stanford Profiles profiles.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. [1410.0342] Generalized Low Rank Models arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. Bio web.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Introducing new members of the faculty for 2016-17 | Cornell Chronicle news.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Agarwal, Rush, Tschida, Udell win Sloan Fellowships | Cornell Chronicle news.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Madeleine Udell joins MS&E as Assistant Professor | Management Science and Engineering msande.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. [2402.10172] OptiMUS: Scalable Optimization Modeling with (MI)LP Solvers and Large Language Models arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  8. [2511.00183] PDE-SHARP: PDE Solver Hybrids through Analysis and Refinement Passes arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  9. Madeleine Udell web.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.