Former PACM student Afonso Bandeira wins 2018 Sloan Research Fellowship

Congratulations to Afonso Bandeira *15!  Afonso is a former student of Professor Amit Singer and recent winner of a 2018 Sloan Research Fellowship. He currently is an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences with a joint appointment in the Center for Data Science at NYU. He is a member of the NYU Math and Data group.

Bandeira seeks a deeper understanding of various processes for extracting information from data. While the massive datasets now available hold the promise of changing the understanding of the world around us, the computational challenges arising from analyzing these datasets are currently not well understood, and may pose fundamental barriers to learning from data. Bandeira's work probes the limits of statistical inference with computational constraints. As a first test-bed for ideas, he has been focusing on problems with strong algebraic structure, such as reconstructing a molecule from many noisy images in cryo-electron microscopy.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation congratulates the winners of the 2018 Sloan Research Fellowships. These 126 early-career scholars represent the most promising scientific researchers working today. Their achievements and potential place them among the next generation of scientific leaders in the U.S. and Canada. Winners receive $65,000, which may be spent over a two-year term on any expense supportive of their research.