PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Manuel Gomez Rodriguez

Manuel Gomez Rodriguez is a machine-learning researcher whose work spans social and networked systems and decisions shaped by people and algorithms. He earned a telecommunications engineering degree at Carlos III University in Madrid in 2006, followed by electrical-engineering degrees at Stanford in 2009 and 2013. His 2013 diffusion research received a NIPS Outstanding Paper Award; he joined MPI-SWS in 2014 and became faculty (W2) there in 2021. He became an ELLIS Fellow in 2019, led the ERC Starting Grant project Human-Centric Machine Learning from 2020 to 2025, and received a 2024 ERC Consolidator Grant for Counterfact. As of October 2026, he is tenured faculty at MPI-SWS; three of his papers were accepted to NeurIPS, and he announced plans to teach a Paris tutorial on generative AI economics.

Timeline

  1. 2006–2013

    Engineering in Madrid and Stanford

    In 2006, he graduates in telecommunications engineering from Carlos III University in Madrid. He earns an MS in electrical engineering at Stanford in 2009 and completes his Stanford PhD in 2013. His research uses machine learning and data mining to analyze, model and control social, information and networked systems.

  2. 2013

    Diffusion papers and an award

    In 2013, he coauthors “Modeling Information Propagation with Survival Theory,” which applies additive and multiplicative risk models to infer unobserved diffusion networks. His paper “Scalable Influence Estimation in Continuous-Time Diffusion Networks,” with Nan Du, Le Song and Hongyuan Zha, receives the NIPS Outstanding Paper Award in 2013.

  3. July 2013–October 2014

    A postdoctoral fellowship

    From July 2013 to October 2014, he is a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.

  4. November 2014–March 2021

    Faculty at MPI-SWS

    He joins MPI-SWS as tenure-track faculty in November 2014 and becomes Faculty (W2) there in March 2021.

  5. 2019–2025

    Human-centric machine learning

    He becomes an ELLIS Fellow in 2019, and his work includes human-centered machine learning. In 2020, he receives an ERC Starting Grant for his Human-Centric Machine Learning project. From 2020 to 2025, he leads the project, which develops models for decision processes where human and algorithmic choices influence one another.

  6. 2024

    Counterfact Consolidator Grant

    In December 2024, he receives an ERC Consolidator Grant for Counterfact: Counterfactuals in Minds and Machines, a five-year project.

  7. 2026

    NeurIPS papers and tutorial

    In September 2026, three of his papers are accepted to NeurIPS 2026: “Learning to Decide with AI Assistance under Human-Alignment,” “Optimizing Social Utility in Sequential Experiments” and “Test-Time Compute Games.” In October 2026, he announces plans to teach a NeurIPS tutorial on the economics of generative AI in Paris with Ander Artola Velasco and Stratis Tsirtsis.

  8. As of October 2026

    Tenured faculty at MPI-SWS

    As of October 2026, he is tenured faculty at MPI-SWS.

Career

  1. Since 2014Max Planck SocietyTenure-Track Faculty, Tenured Faculty
  2. 2013–2014Max Planck Institute for Intelligent SystemsPostdoctoral Fellow

Education

  1. 2013Stanford UniversityPhD
  2. 2009Stanford UniversityMS in Electrical Engineering
  3. 2006Universidad Carlos III de MadridTelecommunications Engineering

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Manuel Gomez Rodriguez. 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.
  2. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Max Planck Society. 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. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Max Planck Society. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes Max Planck Society. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.

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 Manuel Gomez Rodriguez yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Intelligent Autonomous Systems | Member / Manuel Gomez Rodriguez ias.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Manuel Gomez Rodriguez people.mpi-sws.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Modeling Information Propagation with Survival Theory proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. NIPS 2013 Awards nips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Manuel Gomez-Rodriguez awarded ERC Starting Grant mpi-sws.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Human-Centric Machine Learning learning.mpi-sws.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Manuel Gomez-Rodriguez awarded ERC Consolidator Grant mpi-sws.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Manuel Gomez Rodriguez people.mpi-sws.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. NeurIPS 2026 Tutorial Announcement blog.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Manuel Gomez Rodriguez – MPI SWS mpi-sws.org. Checked 21 October 2026.