I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science of the University of Sydney, in the Sydney Algorithms and Computing Theory (SACT) group. Prior to that, I was a postdoc first in the Stanford Theory Group, then at IBM Research Almaden. Even prior to that, I obtained my Ph.D. from the Computer Science department of Columbia University, where I was advised by Prof. Rocco Servedio. Long ago, in a distant land, I received a M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Parisian Master of Research in Computer Science, and an engineering degree from one of France's "Grand Schools," the École Centrale Paris.

My main areas of study are distribution testing (and, broadly speaking, property testing), learning theory, and, more generally, randomised algorithms and the theory of machine learning. One of my current focuses is on understanding the computational aspects of learning and statistical inference subject to various resource or information constraints. Another, not quite disjoint from the first, lies in reliable and rigorous approaches to data privacy, specifically differential privacy.

CV (PDF)» ORCID Google Scholar DBLP BlueSky Mastodon

Advising

Prospective Ph.D. students: If you are an undergrad/masters student with a strong background in algorithms and/or discrete mathematics interested (broadly) in the theoretical aspects of learning, randomised algorithms, or privacy, and are keen on spending 3-4 years in one of the world's best places to live, you can contact me, including your CV and a short paragraph of introduction. Please check my publications for some of my recent work, or my recent survey.

I also regularly supervise research projects (over Summer and Winter) for undergraduate students, as part of the Engineering Vacation Research Internship Program, and Honours students (18cp). If you are interested in either, please get in touch!

• Ph.D. (current): Kenny Chen (co-advised with Julián Mestre)
• Ph.D. (current): Abigail Gentle
• Ph.D. (current): Sam Polgar (co-advised with Aravind Thiagarajan)
• Ph.D. (current): Joy (Qiping) Yang
• MPhil (graduated): Yun Li

Selected Publications All Publications»

Professional Service

Conference Committees

• Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS): 2020, 2025 (General Chair)
• International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC): 2024 (General co-Chair)
• European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA): 2021 (Track A)
• International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP): 2023 (Track A)
• Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS): 2020
• International Conference on Randomization and Computation (RANDOM): 2021, 2023
• Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA): 2021, 2023, 2026
• Symposium on Simplicity in Algorithms (SOSA): 2024

• Information Theory Workshop (ITW): 2025 (TPC co-Chair)
• Workshop on Local Algorithms (WoLA) (Steering Committee member): 2024 (Chair), 2025
• Tutorial: "Concentration Inequalities"  
  Invited to give a tutorial at the ALT 2022 Mentoring Workshop, organised by the Learning Theory Alliance.
• Summer course: "Estimation and Hypothesis testing under information constraints"  
  Invited to give a series of lectures at the 2021 Croucher Summer Course in Information Theory (CSCIT).
• Tutorial: "Statistical Inference in Distributed or Constrained Settings: Techniques and Recipes"
  Co-organized with Jayadev Acharya and Himanshu Tyagi at COLT'21 (Invited tutorial).
• Social chair: TheoryFest at STOC'21 and STOC'23
• Workshops, Tutorials, and Community Events Chair: COLT'25
• Program Committee: Distributed and Private Machine Learning (DPML)
  Workshop at ICLR'21.
• Tutorial: "Algorithmic Aspects of High-Dimensional Probabilistic Models"
  Co-organized with Arnab Bhattacharya at FOCS'23.
• Tutorial: "Lower Bounds for Statistical Inference in Distributed and Constrained Settings"  
  Co-organized with Jayadev Acharya and Himanshu Tyagi at FOCS'20.
• Workshop: "A TCS Quiver"
  Co-organized with Gautam Kamath at FOCS'19.
• Workshop: "Frontiers in Distribution Testing"  
  Co-organized with Gautam Kamath at FOCS'17.
• Workshop: "(Some) Orthogonal Polynomials and their Applications to TCS"  
  Co-organized with Gautam Kamath at FOCS'16.

• Co-organizer of TCS+, an online seminar series in theoretical computer science.
• Co-organizer of Foundations of Data Science Virtual Talk Series, an online seminar series on the theory of data science.
• Co-editor of the Property Testing Review.
• Contributor to the Differential Privacy website, a hub for the differential privacy research community.

Random Links

• Weekly Twitter quiz Theoretical computer science, mathematics, and random nuggets.
• Notes on Github Folklore facts on probability distribution learning, testing, and whatever-ing .
• Math.StackExchange A place where I procrastinate.