Sara van de Geer
Sara van de Geer is a Dutch mathematical statistician whose work on high-dimensional models, sparsity and statistical learning includes theory for ReLU neural networks. She studied mathematics in Leiden, held posts in the Netherlands, Britain and France, and joined ETH Zurich in 2005 as its first woman mathematics professor. Her 2011 book with Peter Bühlmann covers high-dimensional data, and a 2019 paper with Peter Hinz studies the linear regions of ReLU networks. She served as president of the Bernoulli Society from 2015 to 2017, received the Order of Orange-Nassau, and belonged to several science academies by 2023. She co-organized a 2024 workshop on statistics and AI, received the Prix Laplace in 2025, and coauthored a 2026 model-selection paper; as of October 2026, she is a professor in ETH Zurich's Seminar for Statistics.
- Now at
- ETH Zurich
- Works
- 217
- Citations
- 12,733
- h-index
- 34
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 15 October 2026.
Timeline
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1982–2005
Career across Europe
She is a Dutch mathematical statistician who studies mathematics in Leiden and works in research and university posts in Tilburg, Amsterdam, Bristol, Utrecht, Leiden and Toulouse. By 2005, she is a full professor at Leiden.
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2005
ETH Zurich's first woman professor
She joins ETH Zurich as its first woman mathematics professor in 2005, after a full professorship at Leiden.
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2011–2019
High-dimensional data and ReLU networks
With Peter Bühlmann, she publishes Statistics for High-Dimensional Data in 2011. In 2019, she and Peter Hinz develop upper bounds for the number of linear regions in ReLU feed-forward neural networks.
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2015
A knighthood and presidency
The Dutch king makes her a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau in 2015. She serves as president of the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability from 2015 to 2017.
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By 2023
Science academy membership
By 2023, she belongs to the European Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the American National Academy of Sciences.
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2024
Statistics and AI workshop
She co-organizes the Oberwolfach workshop Statistics and Learning Theory in the Era of Artificial Intelligence in 2024. The workshop examines high-dimensional inference through mathematical statistics, machine learning and theoretical computer science.
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2025
Prix Laplace in statistics
She receives the Prix Laplace in 2025, and a plenary conference in her honour takes place at the Journées de Statistique in Marseille.
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As of October 2026
Professor at ETH Zurich
She is a professor in ETH Zurich's Seminar for Statistics, working on high-dimensional models, sparsity and statistical learning. In 2026, she coauthors The Pivotal Information Criterion, which formulates model selection as a continuous optimization problem.
Sources and credits
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