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General Information

Full Name Burak Varıcı
Languages English, Turkish

Education

  • 2024 (expected)
    Ph.D. Electrical Engineering
    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
    • Thesis Causal Learning via Interventions Estimation and Design
    • Advisor Prof. Ali Tajer
  • 2020
    M.S. Electrical Engineering
    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
  • 2018
    B.S. Electrical & Electronics Engineering
    Boğaziçi University

Experience

  • 2018 - 2023
    Research Assistant
    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
    • Developed identifiability results and algorithms for causal representation learning via interventions
    • Designed and analyzed causal bandit algorithms with relaxed assumptions compared to the state-of-the-art
    • Developed consistent algorithms to learn from interventional data in both causally sufficient and insufficient systems
    • Researched on structure learning of shared subgraphs for multiple undirected graphical models.
  • 2022
    Visiting Research Scholar
    MIT-IBM Watson AI LAB
    • Developed a novel framework for causal discovery from a mixture of models
  • 2020
    AI Horizons Extern
    The Rensselaer-IBM AI Research Collaboration
    • Researched on combining the causal discovery process with generative modeling
  • 2017
    Intern
    Speech Enabled Smart Technologies (Istanbul, Turkey)
    • Built deep learning algorithms for speaker identity verification systems

Honors and Awards

  • 2023
    • NeurIPS Top Reviewer Award
  • 2023
    • UAI Top Reviewer Award
  • 2022
    • Belsky Award for Computational Sciences and Engineering
  • 2022
    • Jerry Dziuba ECSE Graduate Student Service Award
  • 2020
    • The Rensselaer-IBM AI Research Collaboration Fellowship
  • 2012
    • International Balkan Mathematical Olympiad - Silver Medal
  • 2012
    • Turkish National Mathematical Olympiad - Silver Medal

Service

Reviewer IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, NeurIPS (2021, 2022, 2023), UAI (2023), AAAI (2023), AISTATS (2024)