PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Michael Carbin

Michael Carbin is a computer scientist whose work connects programming systems, unreliable hardware, and neural networks. He earned degrees at Stanford and MIT, worked on deep learning systems at Microsoft Research, and coauthored a framework for programming with unreliable hardware. With Jonathan Frankle, he coauthored the Lottery Ticket Hypothesis, which won ICLR’s 2019 Best Paper Award; he received the 2025 Presidential Early Career Award for programming systems research. As of October 2026, he is an associate professor in MIT’s EECS department.

Born
1984
Badges

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 2006–2015

    Degrees at Stanford and MIT

    He earns a B.S. in computer science at Stanford in 2006, then an S.M. in 2009 and a Ph.D. in 2015 in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.

  2. 2013

    An OOPSLA best paper

    With Sasa Misailovic and Martin Rinard, he wins OOPSLA’s 2013 Best Paper Award for “Verifying Quantitative Reliability for Programs That Execute on Unreliable Hardware.” The paper presents a framework for specifying tolerable computation errors and calculating the chance that software will perform as intended.

  3. 2014–2018

    Deep learning at Microsoft

    He works as a researcher at Microsoft Research on Deep Learning Systems from 2014 to 2018.

  4. 2015–2021

    Joining MIT EECS

    He joins MIT as a visiting scientist in March 2015 and becomes an assistant professor in EECS in January 2016. MIT promotes him to associate professor with tenure in December 2021.

  5. 2018–2020

    An NSF CAREER award

    In 2018, he receives the NSF CAREER Award; the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation names him a Sloan Research Fellow in computer science in 2020.

  6. 2019

    The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis

    He and Jonathan Frankle win ICLR’s 2019 Best Paper Award for “The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis: Finding Sparse, Trainable Neural Networks.” Their paper shows that pruning identifies subnetworks whose original weights let them train alone to accuracy close to the full network.

  7. 2025

    A Presidential Early Career Award

    In January 2025, he receives the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for his research on programming systems.

  8. As of October 2026

    Associate professor at MIT

    As of October 2026, he is an associate professor in MIT’s EECS department, with research in programming languages and software engineering. In 2025, he leads CSAIL’s Programming Systems Group, which develops systems that manipulate uncertainty to improve performance, energy consumption, and resilience.

Career

  1. Since 2015Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyVisiting Scientist, Assistant Professor
  2. 2025MIT CSAILLead
  3. 2014–2018Microsoft ResearchResearcher

Education

  1. 2015Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPh.D.
  2. 2009Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyS.M.
  3. 2006Stanford UniversityB.S.

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 Michael Carbin. 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. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 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.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Programming Uncertain Computations by Michael Carbin | NSF nsf.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Researchers Win OOPSLA Best Paper Award | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Department of EECS announces 2022 promotions - MIT EECS eecs.mit.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Carbin and Mueller named 2020 Sloan Research Fellows | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Best Paper Award iclr.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. [1803.03635] The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis: Finding Sparse, Trainable Neural Networks arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. CSAIL’s Broderick and Carbin earn Presidential Early Career Awards | MIT CSAIL csail.mit.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Michael Carbin - MIT EECS eecs.mit.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.