I am a Professor in Machine Learning and Data Science with a joint appointment in Computer Science and Statistics. I am a Turing AI Fellow (2021-2026) having received the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Turing AI Acceleration FellowshipLink opens in a new window in order to lead research on setting the Machine Learning Foundations of Digital Twins. I am an ELLIS member and also affiliated with New York University as a Visiting Exchange Professor at the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP). My research interests are in probabilistic machine learning and Bayesian statistics with an emphasis on the study and integration of various forms of structure and inductive biases (structured priors, spatiotemporal dependencies, dynamics, compositions, physical laws, flows, causality, etc) while advancing robust and scalable approximate inference methodologies. My research has broad applications in Digital Twins, Bayesian nonparametrics and spatiotemporal problems in urban science and computational sustainability. I am the founder and PI of the cross-departmental Warwick Machine Learning Group and I lead two large projects at The Turing that are impact stories.

Projects (EPSRC, UKRI, LRF, Turing)

Machine Learning Foundations of Digital Twins, UKRI, Turing AI Acceleration Fellowship, [Lead PI, 01/2021 - Present]

Project Odysseus

London Air Quality project

Publications

Research Group

Post-doctoral Research Associates

Oliver Hamelijnck (2023-2025)

Patrick O'Hara (2024-2025)

PhD Students

Harita Dellaporta (2020-2024)

Jishnu Ayyangatu Kuzhiyil (2021-2025) [co-supervisor Dr. Dhammika Widanalage]

Yorgos Felekis (2022-2026) [co-supervisor Dr. Fabio M. Zennaro]

Mengqi Chen (2023-2027) [co-supervisor Dr. Thomas Berrett]

Loukas Sfountouris (2024-2028) [co-supervisor Dr. Paris Giampouras]

Research Assistants/Research Software Engineers

Sueda Çiftçi (2022-2025)

Terje Mildner (2024-2025)

Paul Francis (2024-2025)

Arqam Patel (2024-2025)

Group Alumni

Dr. Fabio Massimo Zenaro (PDRA, 2022-2023) -> [Associate Prof. @ University of Bergen]

Dr. Maud Lemercier (PhD, 2018-2022) -> [Research Associate @ University of Oxford]

Dr. Shanaka Perera (PhD, 2018-2022) -> [AI Research Scientist @ Nimbus]

Nicola Branchini (RA, 2020-2021) -> [PhD student @ University of Edinburgh]

James Walsh (RA, 2019-2021) -> [PhD student @ University of Cambridge]

Dr. Jeremias Knoblauch (PhD, 2017-2022) -> [John Copas & ISBA Savage Award for PhD thesis, Assistant Prof. @ University College London]

Dr. Virginia Aglietti (PhD, 2017-2021) -> [Harrison Award for PhD thesis, Research Scientist at DeepMind]

Dr. Kangrui Wang (PDRA, 2018-2020) -> [Research Associate @ University of Cambridge]

Dr. Omer Deniz Akyildiz (PDRA, 2019-2021) -> [Assistant Prof. @ Imperial College London]

Dr. Ayman Boustati (PhD, 2017-2020) -> [ML Research Scientist at causaLens]

Dr. Daniel Tait (PDRA, 2018-2020) -> [AI Research Scientist at Clear Dynamics]

Dr. Neil Dhir (PDRA, 2019-2020) -> [Senior Research Fellow @ The Turing]

Dr. Karla Monterrubio Gomez (PhD, 2016-2019) -> [Research Associate @ University of Edinburgh]

Dr. Joe Meagher (PhD, 2016-2020) -> [Research Associate @ University College Dublin]

Yannis Zachos (BSc thesis, 2018) -> [PhD student @ University of Cambridge]

PhD Supervision

I am interested in supervising highly motivated PhD students with a strong quantitative background at the intersection of computer science and statistics (machine learning, computational statistics, applied math). See recent papers and grants for my interests and get in touch with me to discuss.

BSc/MSc/MEng Supervision

Every year I will be proposing and supervising undergraduate and master's thesis projects at both Statistics and Computer Science departments. Contact me with your CV if interested in these. If you have a well defined project of your own that is close to my interests and would like me to supervise your thesis feel free to contact me with your CV and a project description.

Notable 1st Class BSc thesis:

• James Walsh, BSc in Data Science, Physics-informed machine learning of Li-ion 18650 battery degradation, Dept. of Statistics & Dept. of Computer Science, University of Warwick, 2019. [co-supervised with Dr. Daniel Tait]
• Patrick O'Hara, BSc in Computer Science, Running NP-Hard from Air Pollution: Graph optimisation algorithms, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Warwick, 2018. [co-supervised with Dr. Ramanujan Sridharan]
• Yannis Zachos, BSc in Data Science, Bayesian Online Changepoint Detection: Spatio-temporal point processes, Dept. of Statistics & Dept. of Computer Science, University of Warwick, 2018. [co-supervised with Jeremias Knoblauch]

Notable 1st Class/Distinction MSc thesis:

• Giorgos Felekis, MSc in Machine Learning,Thesis, Paper: Generalised Variational Inference posteriors in Probabilistic Deep Learning, UCL, 2020. [co-supervised with Dr. Brooks Paige]
• Johannes Muller, MSc in Interdisciplinary Mathematics, Parameter estimation and consistency for discrete determinantal point processes, Dept. of Mathematics, University of Warwick, 2018. [co-supervised with Prof. Nikolaos Zygouras]
• Edoardo Barp, MSc in Mathematics for Real World Systems, Bayesian Inverse Reinforcement Learning for path-based reward inference, Dept. of Mathematics, University of Warwick, 2018. [co-supervised with Virginia Aglietti]

Selected Awards

• Best Paper Award, 2024 Wilkes Award, The Computer Journal, 2024
• Best Paper Award, AISTATS, 2022
• Turing AI Acceleration Fellowship, UKRI, 2021-2026
• Warwick Impact Fund Award, 2018
• Turing Reproducible Research Award, 2018
• ACM SIGMOD Most Reproducible Paper Award, 2017
• Warwick Awards for Teaching Excellence (nominated) 2015-2016, 2016-2017
• NYU CUSP Teaching and Mentoring award 2014
• The Classification Society Distinguished Dissertation Award, Carnegie Mellon University, 2012
• Best Paper for Deployed Application Award, AAAI IAAI, 2012
• EMC² Big Data Award, Data Computing Division, Cornell University, 2011
• Best Paper Award, IEEE ICMLA, 2010
• NCR PhD Fellowship award (full funding), 2006 - 2009

Previous placements

• Associate Professor, Computer Science & Statistics, University of Warwick, 2018-2021
• Assistant Professor, Computer Science & Statistics, University of Warwick, 2015-2018
• Research Assistant Professor, CUSP, New York University, 2013-2015
• PDRA & Research Associate, Computer Science, Cornell University, 2009-2013

Journal editing:

Bayesian AnalysisLink opens in a new window, Associate Editor, [2021-2023]

Royal Society Open Science, Associate Editor, [2021-2023]

Data-Centric EngineeringLink opens in a new window, Cambridge University Press [2019-2020]

Conference Reviewing:

NeurIPS, ICML, AAAI, IJCAI, ICPR, AISTATS

Journal reviewing:

JMLR, Neural Computation, Bioinformatics, IEEE Signal Processing, Pattern Recognition, IEEE SMC

Workshop/Special session co-organizer:

ICASSP 2018 "Wildlife Bioacoustics and Adaptive Signal Processing", D. Stowell, N. Harte, T. Damoulas

AAAI 2015 "AI for Cities", T. Damoulas, B. Srivastava, S. McIlraith, F. Lecue

NIPS 2013 "Machine Learning for Sustainability", E. Bonilla, T. Dietterich, T. Damoulas, A. Krause

NIPS 2012 "Human Computation for Science and Computational Sustainability", T. Damoulas, T. Dietterich, E. Law, S. Belongie

Short Bio:

Theo is a Professor of Machine Learning and Data Science at the University of Warwick with a joint appointment in the departments of Computer Science and Statistics. In 2021 he was awarded a prestigious 5-year UKRI Turing AI Fellowship to lead research that sets the ML foundations of Digital Twins. He is a group leader in the Data Centric Engineering program at The Alan Turing Institute having served as deputy director of the program till 2021, a NERC Senior Expert, a Visiting Professor at NYU, and the founder and PI of the Warwick Machine Learning Group. His research interests are in probabilistic machine learning and Bayesian statistics with an emphasis on the study and integration of various forms of structure and inductive biases while advancing robust and scalable approximate inference methodologies.

Academic trajectory:

Theo joined the University of Warwick in 2015 from New York University where he was an Assistant Professor of Research (2013-2015). Before that he was a Research Associate in the department of Computer Science at Cornell University working with Prof. Carla P. Gomes, Prof. Bart Selman, Dr. Daniel Fink and the CLO eBird team headed by Steve Kelling (2009-2013). He finished his PhD thesis titled Probabilistic Multiple Kernel Learning in 2009 under the supervision of Prof. Mark A. Girolami and Prof. Cornelis Just "Keith" van Rijsbergen at the School of Computing Science, University of Glasgow. He holds an MSc in Informatics (Distinction) from the University of Edinburgh (2003-2004) and an MEng in Mechanical Engineering (1st Class) from the University of Manchester (1999-2003).

Unsurprisingly, Theo’s academic ancestry tree goes back to Newton:

 

Research

Publications

Google Scholar

Teaching

CS342: Machine Learning