PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Zachary Lipton

Also known as Zachary Chase Lipton, Zack Lipton

Zachary Lipton studies machine learning for healthcare and natural language processing, and he co-authored the open-source book Dive into Deep Learning. Born in 1985, the jazz saxophonist from New Rochelle, New York completed undergraduate studies at Columbia University and, in 2017, a computer-science doctorate at the University of California, San Diego. In May 2015 he published a critical review of recurrent neural networks with John Berkowitz and Charles Elkan, and in 2016 he published The Mythos of Model Interpretability and launched the Approximately Correct blog. While an assistant professor of business technologies at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School, he received an Amazon Web Services Machine Learning Research Award in May 2019 for work on breast cancer diagnosis. As of October 2026, he is the Raj Reddy Associate Professor of Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon, director of the Approximately Correct Machine Intelligence lab, and cofounder and chief technology officer at Abridge.

Now at
Carnegie Mellon University and Abridge
Works
232
Citations
15,400
h-index
47

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 17 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1985–2017

    A doctorate after Columbia

    Born in 1985, he is a jazz saxophonist from New Rochelle, New York. He completes undergraduate studies at Columbia University and, in 2017, a computer-science PhD at the University of California, San Diego. Charles Elkan and Julian McAuley advise the dissertation Learning from Temporally-Structured Human Activities Data.

  2. May 2015

    A review of recurrent networks

    In May 2015 he, John Berkowitz, and Charles Elkan publish A Critical Review of Recurrent Neural Networks for Sequence Learning.

  3. 2016

    Interpretability and a public blog

    He publishes The Mythos of Model Interpretability and presents it at the 2016 ICML Workshop on Human Interpretability in Machine Learning. He also launches the Approximately Correct blog in 2016 to bridge technical and social perspectives on machine learning.

  4. May 2019

    An AWS research award

    In May 2019 he is an assistant professor of business technologies at the Tepper School and receives the Amazon Web Services Machine Learning Research Award, with a $100,000 gift, for work on the accuracy of breast cancer diagnosis.

  5. February 2023

    Dive into Deep Learning

    With Aston Zhang, Mu Li, and Alexander J. Smola, he co-authors Dive into Deep Learning, an open-source book drafted in Jupyter notebooks. In February 2023 a Cambridge University Press edition is forthcoming.

  6. 2023

    Abridge chief scientific officer

    Abridge appoints him chief scientific officer in February 2023. He is an assistant professor of machine learning at Carnegie Mellon, has experience as a research scientist at Amazon AI, and has been a long-time advisor on the company's clinical conversations. The company welcomes him as chief technology officer in 2023.

  7. As of October 2026

    Professor and Abridge CTO

    He is the Raj Reddy Associate Professor of Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon University, where he directs the Approximately Correct Machine Intelligence lab. His research covers healthcare and natural language processing. He is cofounder and chief technology officer at Abridge, whose product listens to doctor-patient conversations and drafts after-visit notes.

Sources and credits

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  1. Zachary Lipton - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 16 October 2026.
  2. [1506.00019] A Critical Review of Recurrent Neural Networks for Sequence Learning arxiv.org. Checked 16 October 2026.
  3. [1606.03490] The Mythos of Model Interpretability arxiv.org. Checked 16 October 2026.
  4. Zachary Lipton | Associate Professor, Machine Learning, CMU zacharylipton.com. Checked 16 October 2026.
  5. Zachary Lipton - Software and Societal Systems Department - School of Computer Science - Carnegie Mellon University s3d.cmu.edu. Checked 16 October 2026.
  6. Personal Mention - The Piper - Carnegie Mellon University cmu.edu. Checked 16 October 2026.
  7. Dive into Deep Learning — Dive into Deep Learning 1.0.3 documentation d2l.ai. Checked 16 October 2026.
  8. News - Carnegie Mellon University cmu.edu. Checked 16 October 2026.
  9. Amazon AI Researcher Zachary Lipton Joins Abridge as Chief Scientific Officer abridge.com. Checked 16 October 2026.
  10. Key Highlights and Achievements | A Year of Abridge abridge.com. Checked 16 October 2026.
  11. Zachary Lipton, PhD | Abridge Blog Author abridge.com. Checked 16 October 2026.