ORIE’s Christina Lee Yu receives Intel® Rising Star Faculty Award

Christina Lee Yu, an assistant professor in Cornell’s School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, has received the Intel® Rising Star Faculty Award (RSA).

Professor Yu is one of 10 “promising early-career academic researchers who lead some of the most important technology research of our time,” Intel said in a statement. “The chosen faculty members work with disruptive technologies that have the potential to advance the future of computing in fields encompassing computer science, electrical engineering, computer engineering, material science, and chemical engineering.”

"I am honored to receive the Intel Rising Stars award and am grateful for Intel's commitment to support early career researchers,” Yu said. “I look forward to collaborating with them to further the impact of my research."

Professor Yu’s research is at the interface of modern statistics and machine-learning algorithms for high-dimensional data analysis and sequential decision making. Her accomplishments include designing scalable algorithms with optimal theoretical guarantees for statistical inference with noisy high dimensional data, provably reducing memory and data requirements of reinforcement learning algorithms by using adaptive discretization to exploit structure, proposing simple policies for sequential multi-objective fair resource allocation. Her research bridges theory and practice in a way that has led to fundamental developments in theoretical understanding of commonly used algorithms as well as novel design of practical machine learning algorithms to aid better decision making.

The RSA program recognizes community members who are doing exceptional work in the field and facilitates long-term collaborative relationships with senior technical leaders at Intel. Recipients of this award are also distinguished for exemplifying innovative teaching methods and increasing the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in computer science and engineering. 

The key technology areas under investigation by selected faculty include cybersecurity, hardware security, nanotechnology, semiconductor device technologies, neuromorphic computing, machine learning/artificial intelligence, and memory management. 

In addition to Cornell, this year’s winners include esteemed faculty from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Arizona State University, Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, Oregon State University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Indian Institute of Science.