PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Maryam Kamgarpour

Maryam Kamgarpour is a control theorist at EPFL whose research builds theory and algorithms for safe learning, stochastic control and decision-making in multi-agent games. Born in Iran, she moved to Canada at 15, studied at the University of Waterloo, and completed a PhD at UC Berkeley with Claire Tomlin in December 2011. She became Assistant Professor of Control Systems at ETH Zurich in 2016 with an ERC Starting Grant, joined the University of British Columbia in 2020, and moved to EPFL in 2021 to lead the SYCAMORE lab. Her honours include the 2024 European Control Award, a 2025 ERC Consolidator Grant for the CONCISE project on safety guarantees in transportation, power systems and robotics, and a place among the Top 100+ Women in AI, Data & Robotics – Switzerland 2026. An ELLIS Fellow, she is an associate professor at EPFL.

Now at
EPFL

Timeline

  1. 2010–2011

    A Berkeley PhD with Claire Tomlin

    Born in Iran, she is inspired in elementary school by seeing Maryam Mirzakhani, then an International Mathematical Olympiad gold medallist, on Iranian television; at 15 she moves to Canada and later earns a Bachelor of Applied Science at the University of Waterloo. She wins the NASA High Potential Individual Award and the NASA Excellence in Publication Award in 2010. She completes a PhD in engineering at UC Berkeley in December 2011 as a doctoral student of Claire Tomlin.

  2. 2016

    Assistant professor at ETH Zurich

    The ETH Board appoints her Assistant Professor of Control Systems at ETH Zurich's Automatic Control Laboratory, a post she takes up in April 2016. Backed by an ERC Starting Grant for 2016 to 2021, she develops methods for verifying safety specifications and for optimal control, with work on energy networks, CO2-efficient aircraft trajectories and automatic support for search and rescue missions.

  3. 2020–2021

    From UBC to EPFL

    In 2020, she returns to Vancouver, her high school city, as an assistant professor in UBC's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and an affiliate of its Institute of Applied Mathematics, with work on safe optimization and learning, learning equilibria in games, bandit problems and mechanism design. She joins EPFL in the fall of 2021 as a tenure-track assistant professor in the School of Engineering's Institute of Mechanical Engineering, where she leads the Systems Control and Multiagent Optimization Research lab (SYCAMORE).

  4. 2022

    A best paper award

    She shares the 2022 IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems Best Paper Award with Luca Furieri, Yang Zheng and Antonis Papachristodoulou for their paper "Sparsity Invariance for Convex Design of Distributed Controllers".

  5. 2024

    The European Control Award

    The European Control Association names her winner of the 2024 European Control Award, which recognizes contributions by a young researcher in systems and control and comes with EUR 3,000. Her SYCAMORE research spans safe learning, stochastic control, distributed control and game theory, including learning equilibria and mechanism design.

  6. 2025

    An ERC Consolidator Grant

    In 2025, the European Research Council awards her a Consolidator Grant for CONCISE (Control for Safety-Constrained Interactive Systems), which runs from 2026 to 2031. The project seeks provable safety and performance guarantees for multiagent stochastic dynamic games and for AI decision-making algorithms, with tests in transportation, power systems and robotics. In December 2025, she is promoted to associate professor at EPFL.

  7. 2026

    Top 100+ Women in AI

    In 2026, she is one of six NCCR Automation principal investigators named among the Top 100+ Women in AI, Data & Robotics – Switzerland 2026, along with Aude Billard, Niao He and Melanie Zeilinger.

  8. As of October 2026

    Associate professor at EPFL

    She is an associate professor in EPFL's School of Engineering, where she leads SYCAMORE, and a principal investigator in NCCR Automation. She is an ELLIS Fellow in the ELLIS Unit Lausanne and an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

Career

  1. Since 2021EPFLLab lead
  2. 2020–2021University of British ColumbiaAssistant professor
  3. From 2016ETH ZurichAssistant Professor of Control Systems

Education

  1. 2011University of California, BerkeleyPhD in engineering
  2. University of WaterlooBachelor of Applied Science

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 Maryam Kamgarpour. 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 EPFL. 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 median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes EPFL. 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.
  4. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes EPFL. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.

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 Maryam Kamgarpour yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Maryam Kamgarpour wins European Control Award - EPFL actu.epfl.ch. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Claire Tomlin people.eecs.berkeley.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. EPFL - Maryam Kamgarpour people.epfl.ch. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. #NCCRWomen: Maryam Kamgarpour nccr-automation.ch. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. New at D-ITET: Prof. Maryam Kamgarpour – Dept. of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering | ETH Zurich ee.ethz.ch. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Three new professors for D-ITET – Dept. of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering | ETH Zurich ee.ethz.ch. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Welcome to Professor Maryam Kamgarpour - Institute of Applied Mathematics iam.ubc.ca. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. Yang Zheng, Antonis Papachristodoulou, Maryam Kamgarpour, Luca Furieri - 2022 recipient of IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems Best Paper Award | IEEE Control Systems Society ieeecss.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. 2022 IEEE sysos.eng.ox.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  10. European Control Award - ECC26 ecc26.euca-ecc.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  11. Three STI Professors win ERC Consolidator Grants - EPFL actu.epfl.ch. Checked 20 October 2026.
  12. Anne-Florence Bitbol and Maryam Kamgarpour promoted to Associate Professor · Women Professors Forum eth-wpf.ch. Checked 20 October 2026.
  13. Six PIs honoured as Top 100+ Women in AI, Data & Robotics – Switzerland 2026 nccr-automation.ch. Checked 20 October 2026.
  14. Maryam Kamgarpour | European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems ellis.eu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  15. Maryam Kamgarpour | NCCR Automation nccr-automation.ch. Checked 20 October 2026.