PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Volkan Cevher

Volkan Cevher is an EPFL professor who studies machine learning and has published on signal recovery. He earned a valedictorian B.Sc. in electrical engineering at Bilkent University in 1999, completed a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech in 2005, and worked as a research scientist at Maryland and Rice. His 2008 papers developed structured approaches to compressive sensing and sparse recovery; in 2023, his adversarial-training paper won the AdvML Frontiers Best Paper Award. He served as a Faculty Fellow in Rice's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department from 2010 to 2020 and became an IEEE Fellow in 2024. He is a full professor of Electrical Engineering at EPFL and leads LIONS, where he studies the mathematical and algorithmic foundations of machine learning and AI, including the training and understanding of modern foundation models.

Now at
EPFL
Born
1978

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 1999–2005

    Degrees at Bilkent and Georgia Tech

    At Bilkent University in Ankara, he earns a valedictorian B.Sc. in electrical engineering in 1999. He completes a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech in 2005.

  2. 2006–2009

    Research scientist at Maryland and Rice

    He works as a research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park, from 2006 to 2007 and at Rice University from 2008 to 2009.

  3. 2008

    Model-based compressive sensing

    With Richard G. Baraniuk, Marco F. Duarte and Chinmay Hegde, he introduces model-based compressive sensing in a 2008 paper. Its structured signal models include wavelet trees and block sparsity, which the authors use to recover signals with fewer measurements.

  4. 2008

    Sparse recovery with Markov random fields

    At NeurIPS in 2008, he coauthors Sparse Signal Recovery Using Markov Random Fields, which extends compressive sensing to signals represented by graphical models. The paper uses Markov random fields to represent sparse signals with clustered nonzero coefficients.

  5. 2010–2020

    Rice Faculty Fellow

    He serves as a Faculty Fellow in Rice's Electrical and Computer Engineering Department from 2010 to 2020.

  6. 2023

    AdvML Frontiers Best Paper Award

    A 2023 paper he coauthors, Adversarial Training Should Be Cast as a Non-Zero-Sum Game, wins the Best Paper Award at AdvML Frontiers.

  7. 2024

    IEEE Fellow

    In 2024, he becomes an IEEE Fellow for contributions to model-based signal processing and semi-definite programming.

  8. Since March 2026

    Full professor and LIONS head

    EPFL promotes him to full professor of Electrical Engineering in March 2026, and he leads LIONS. His research covers the mathematical and algorithmic foundations of machine learning and AI, including training and understanding modern foundation models.

Career

  1. Since 2026EPFLFull Professor of Electrical Engineering
  2. 2008–2020Rice UniversityResearch Scientist, Faculty Fellow
  3. 2006–2007University of MarylandResearch Scientist

Education

  1. 2005Georgia Institute of TechnologyPh.D. in electrical and computer engineering
  2. 1999Bilkent UniversityB.Sc. in electrical 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 Volkan Cevher. 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

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  1. Prof. Volkan Cevher ‒ LIONS ‐ EPFL epfl.ch. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Model-Based Compressive Sensing arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Model-based compressive sensing - Houston Methodist Scholars scholars.houstonmethodist.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Model-Based Compressive Sensing arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Sparse Signal Recovery Using Markov Random Fields papers.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. AdvML 2023 - New Frontiers in Adversarial Machine Learning advml-frontier.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Volkan Cevher elected IEEE Fellow - EPFL actu.epfl.ch. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. IEEE Fellows | IEEE Information Theory Society itsoc.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Two STI professors promoted - EPFL actu.epfl.ch. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Appointment of EPFL professors - EPFL actu.epfl.ch. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. EPFL - Volkan Cevher people.epfl.ch. Checked 21 October 2026.