Lester Mackey
{{Short description|American computer scientist and statistician}}
{{Infobox scientist
|image = LMackey (cropped).jpg
|caption = Mackey pictured in 2023
| name = Lester Wayne Mackey II
| birth_place = Long Island, NY, USA
| fields = Machine learning
Computer science
Statistics
| workplaces = Microsoft Research
Stanford University
| alma_mater = University of California, Berkeley
Princeton
| thesis_title = Matrix Factorization and Matrix Concentration
| thesis_url = https://escholarship.org/uc/item/08q2q9vw
| thesis_year = 2012
| doctoral_advisor = Michael I. Jordan
| website = https://web.stanford.edu/~lmackey
}}
Lester Mackey is an American computer scientist and statistician. He is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and an adjunct professor at Stanford University. Mackey develops machine learning methods, models, and theory for large-scale learning tasks driven by applications from climate forecasting, healthcare, and the social good. He was named a 2023 MacArthur Fellow.{{Cite web |title=Lester Mackey |url=https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class-of-2023/lester-mackey |access-date=2023-10-11 |website=www.macfound.org |language=en}}
Early life and education
Mackey grew up on Long Island.{{Cite web |title={{!}} Lester Mackey |url=https://mathematicallygiftedandblack.com/honorees/lester-mackey/ |access-date=2023-10-11 |language=en-US}} He has said that, as a teenager, the Ross Mathematics Program in number theory introduced him to proof-based mathematics, where he learned about induction and rigorous proof. He got his first taste of academic research at the Research Science Institute. He joined Princeton University as an undergraduate student, where he earned his BSE in Computer Science. There he conducted research with Maria Klawe and David Walker.{{Cite web |last=Li |first=Wendy |date=2019-10-09 |title=Conversations with Maya: Lester Mackey |url=https://www.societyforscience.org/blog/conversations-with-maya-lester-mackey/ |access-date=2023-10-11 |website=Society for Science |language=en-US}} Mackey was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a PhD in Computer Science (2012) and an MA in Statistics (2011).{{cite web|url=https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/lmackey/|title=Lester Mackey, Principal Researcher|website=microsoft.com}} At Berkeley, his dissertation, advised by Michael I. Jordan, included work on sparse principal components analysis (PCA) for gene expression modeling, low-rank matrix completion for recommender systems, robust matrix factorization for video surveillance, and concentration inequalities for matrices.{{Cite thesis |title=Matrix Factorization and Matrix Concentration |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/08q2q9vw |publisher=UC Berkeley |date=2012 |language=en |first=Lester |last=Mackey}} After Berkeley, he joined Stanford University, first as a postdoctoral fellow working with Emmanuel Candès and then as an assistant professor of statistics and, by courtesy, computer science. At Stanford, he created the Statistics for Social Good working group.
Research and career
In 2016, Mackey joined Microsoft Research as a researcher and was appointed as an adjunct professor at Stanford University. He was made a principal researcher in 2019.
Mackey's early work developed a method to predict progression rates of people with ALS. He used the PRO-ACT database of clinical trial data and Bayesian inference to predict disease prognosis. He has also developed machine learning models for subseasonal climate and weather forecasting, to more accurately predict temperature and precipitation 2-6 weeks in advance. His models outperform the operational, physics-based dynamical models used by the United States Bureau of Reclamation.
Awards and honors
- 2003 Intel Science Talent Search 6th Place{{Cite web |date=2003-03-11 |title=Top Teen Scientists Honored At Intel Science Talent Search
|url=https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/2003/20030311corp.htm |access-date=2023-10-13 |website=Intel |language=en}}
- Namesake of minor planet 15093 Lestermackey{{Cite web |title=(15093) Lestermackey |url=https://minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?object_id=15093 |access-date=2023-10-14 |website=IAU Minor Planet Center |language=en}}
- 2006 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship{{Cite web |title=2006 Goldwater Scholars
|url=https://goldwaterscholarship.gov/2006-scholars/ |access-date=2023-10-13 |website=Goldwater Scholarship |language=en}}
- 2007 Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate Award Winner{{Cite web |title=2007 Outstanding Undergraduate Award Winners |url=https://archive.cra.org/Activities/awards/undergrad/2007.html |access-date=2023-10-13 |website=CRA |language=en}}
- 2007 Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize{{Cite web |last=Stevens |first=Ruth |date=2007-02-24 |title=Princeton gives highest awards to top students |url=https://www.princeton.edu/news/2007/02/24/princeton-gives-highest-awards-top-students |access-date=2023-10-12 |website=Princeton |language=en}}
- 2009 Second Place in the $1 million Netflix Prize competition for collaborative filtering{{Cite web |last=Jackson |first=Dan |date=2017-07-07 |title=The Netflix Prize: How a $1 Million Contest Changed Binge-Watching Forever |url=https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/the-netflix-prize |access-date=2023-10-11 |website=Thrillist |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Crowley |first=Magdalene L. |date=2017-07-10 |title=The tale of Lester Mackey's pursuit of the Netflix Prize |url=https://eecs.berkeley.edu/news/2017/07/tale-lester-mackeys-pursuit-netflix-prize |access-date=2023-10-11 |website=EECS at UC Berkeley |language=en}}
- 2010 Best Student Paper Award, International Conference on Machine Learning{{Cite web |title=ICML 2010 - Awards |url=https://icml.cc/Conferences/2010/awards.html |access-date=2023-10-13 |website=ICML |language=en}}
- 2012 First Place in the ALS Prediction Prize4Life Challenge for predicting Lou Gehrig's disease progression{{Cite web |last=Zakaib |first=Gwyneth |date=2012-11-15 |title=Contest Winners Offer Solutions for Tracking ALS
|url=https://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/contest-winners-offer-solutions-tracking-als?id=3320 |access-date=2023-10-13 |website=ALZ Forum |language=en}}
- 2019 Winner of U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Subseasonal Climate Forecast Rodeo{{Cite web |date=2019-03-07 |title=Teams complete Bureau of Reclamation's Sub-Seasonal Climate Forecast Rodeo — outperforming the baseline forecasts
|url=https://www.usbr.gov/newsroom/newsrelease/detail.cfm?RecordID=64969 |access-date=2023-10-13 |website=USBR |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190929013341/https://www.usbr.gov/newsroom/newsrelease/detail.cfm?RecordID=64969
|archive-date=2019-09-29
|language=en}}
- 2022 Elected to the Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies Leadership Academy{{Cite web |title=ASA Community |url=https://community.amstat.org/ |access-date=2023-10-11 |website=community.amstat.org |language=en}}
- 2022 Outstanding Paper Award, NeurIPS{{Cite web |last=Chairs 2023 |first=Communications |date=2022-11-21 |title=Announcing the NeurIPS 2022 Awards – NeurIPS Blog |url=https://blog.neurips.cc/2022/11/21/announcing-the-neurips-2022-awards/ |access-date=2023-10-11 |language=en-US}}
- 2023 Ethel Newbold Prize{{Cite web |title=Bernoulli Society News |url=https://www.bernoullisociety.org/news |access-date=2023-10-11 |website=www.bernoullisociety.org}}
- 2023 Elected Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics{{Cite web |title=Institute of Mathematical Statistics {{!}} 2023 IMS Fellows Announced |url=https://imstat.org/2023/05/02/2023-ims-fellows-announced/ |access-date=2023-10-11 |language=en}}
- 2023 MacArthur Fellowship
- 2024 Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association{{cite web|url=https://www.amstat.org/docs/default-source/amstat-documents/pdfs/fellows/Fellows2024.pdf|title=ASA Fellows 2024|publisher=American Statistical Association|access-date=May 31, 2024}}
Selected publications
- {{Cite Q|Q123016814}}
- {{Cite Q|Q123016825}}
- {{Cite Q|Q77680580}}
References
{{Reflist}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mackey, Lester}}
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:People from Long Island
Category:Princeton University alumni
Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni
Category:American statisticians
Category:African-American statisticians
Category:American computer scientists
Category:African-American computer scientists
Category:Stanford University Department of Statistics faculty