Shai Ben-David
Shai Ben-David is a computer scientist who studies the mathematical foundations of machine learning. He studied physics, mathematics and psychology at Hebrew University, held a postdoctoral fellowship in Toronto, joined the Technion faculty in 1987, and moved to Waterloo in 2004. His research includes adapting learned predictors to changes in their environment, and he coauthored a 2014 textbook on machine learning theory. A paper he coauthored on Gaussian mixtures won NeurIPS's 2018 Best Paper Award; ACM named him a Fellow in 2023, and the Royal Society of Canada named him a Fellow in 2025. As of October 2026, he is a professor and University Research Chair at Waterloo, and a Faculty Member and Canada CIFAR AI Chair at Vector.
- Now at
- University of Waterloo and Vector Institute
- Works
- 209
- Citations
- 16,691
- h-index
- 39
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1978–1987
A mathematical education
He studied physics, mathematics and psychology at Hebrew University and received a PhD there in 1987. He held a postdoctoral fellowship in mathematics and computer science at the University of Toronto.
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1987–2004
From Technion to Waterloo
He joined the Technion's computer-science faculty in 1987. Visiting faculty posts at the Australian National University and Cornell preceded his move to Waterloo's School of Computer Science in August 2004.
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2009–2012
Learning through changing data
His research studies how learned predictors adapt to changes in their environment. He served as president of the Association for Computational Learning from 2009 to 2012.
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2014
A machine-learning textbook
With Shai Shalev-Shwartz, he coauthored Understanding Machine Learning: From Theory to Algorithms. The book introduces machine learning and its algorithmic methods in a principled way.
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2018
Learning Gaussian mixtures
The paper he coauthored, Nearly Tight Sample Complexity Bounds for Learning Mixtures of Gaussians via Sample Compression Schemes, won a NeurIPS 2018 Best Paper Award.
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2023
Recognition from ACM
ACM named him a Fellow in 2023 for contributions to and research leadership in machine-learning theory.
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2025
A Canadian fellowship
The Royal Society of Canada named him a Fellow in 2025.
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As of October 2026
Current research appointments
He is a professor and University Research Chair at Waterloo, and a Faculty Member and Canada CIFAR AI Chair at Vector.
Sources and credits
Photo: cs.uwaterloo.ca; Shai Ben-David; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: cs.uwaterloo.ca. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
- Shai Ben-David
- Shai Ben-David | Cheriton School of Computer Science | University of Waterloo
- Shai Ben-David, Ian Goldberg named 2023 ACM Fellows | Cheriton School of Computer Science | University of Waterloo
- Shai Ben-David | 2025 New RSC Fellow | University of Waterloo | The Royal Society of Canada
- Understanding Machine Learning
- Awards NeurIPS 2018
- Vector Institute 2025-26 Annual Report