Benjamin Van Roy Elevated to IEEE Fellow

LIDS alum Dr. Benjamin Van Roy (LIDS/MIT, PhD 1998) will be elevated to a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2019 January for his contributions to the theory and practice of reinforcement learning and approximate dynamic programming.

The IEEE is the world’s leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity. Through its 400,000 plus members in 160 countries, the association is a leading authority on a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics. The IEEE Grade of Fellow is conferred by the IEEE Board of Directors upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest. The total number selected in any one year cannot exceed one-tenth of one- percent of the total voting membership. IEEE Fellow is the highest grade of membership and is recognized by the technical community as a prestigious honor and an important career achievement.

Dr. Benjamin Van Roy is a Professor of Electrical Engineering, Management Science and Engineering, and, by courtesy, Computer Science, at Stanford University, where he has served on the faculty since 1998. His research focuses on understanding how an agent interacting with a poorly understood environment can learn over time to make effective decisions. He is interested in questions concerning what is possible or impossible as well as how to design efficient reinforcement learning algorithms.