Animashree (Anima) Anandkumar

Professor Animashree (Anima) Anandkumar is the Bren Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology and a leading figure in artificial intelligence for scientific discovery. Her research has made foundational contributions to machine learning theory and practice, with a transformative impact on scientific modeling across domains such as fluid dynamics, materials science, climate modeling, plasma physics, and biomedical engineering. Professor Anandkumar is best known for inventing Neural Operators, a powerful framework for learning multiscale physical phenomena governed by partial differential equations. Neural Operators have enabled the first AI-based high-resolution weather forecasting models, delivering orders-of-magnitude speedups over traditional physics-based simulations and now operating at major weather agencies worldwide. Her AI algorithms have also advanced modeling of plasma dynamics in nuclear fusion, safer autonomous flight systems, and the design of medical devices, drugs, and functional enzymes. Earlier in her career, she pioneered tensor methods, probabilistic latent variable models, and theoretical analysis of non-convex optimization, which have become central tools in modern machine learning. Her work has been recognized with numerous prestigious honors, including fellowships of IEEE, ACM, and AAAI, the TIME100 Impact Award, the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award, the Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Senior Fellowship, and awards from the Guggenheim, Sloan, and Blavatnik Foundations. She has also played a prominent role in national and global AI policy discussions, presenting her work on AI and science to the White House Science Council, the National AI Advisory Committee, and at TED 2024.