I am an associate professor of computer science at Amherst College, where I lead the Data* Mammoths, a research&learning group of brilliant undergraduate students, and I serve as the founding director of the Data Science Initiative. I also have an appointment as visiting faculty in Computer Science at Brown University, where I advise PhD students. Previously, I spent some fantastic years as a research scientist in the Labs group at Two Sigma.
My research focuses on algorithms for knowledge discovery, data mining, and machine learning. I develop theory and methods to extract the most information from large datasets, as fast as possible and in a statistically sound way. The problems I study include pattern extraction, graph mining, and time series analysis. My algorithms often use concepts from statistical learning theory and sampling. My research is supported, in part, by NSF CAREER Award #2238693 and by NSF Award #2006765.
My Erdős number is 3 (Erdős → Suen → Upfal → Matteo), and I am a mathematical descendant of Eli Upfal, Eli Shamir (2nd generation), Jacques Hadamard (5th), Siméon Denis Poisson (9th), and Pierre-Simon Laplace (10th).
News
- DMKD: The journal version of DiNgHy, a set of null models and algorithms for non-degenerate directed and annotated hypergraphs, was accepted. Joint work with Maryam and Eli.
- WWW'26: HomeRun, Michelle's undergraduate honors thesis on an almost-streaming approach to Curveball trades, was accepted to the Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web Track.
- KDD'26: VaLUH, Maryam's work on algorithms for the configuration model of undirected hypergraphs was accepted in the first cycle.
- WSDM'26: with long-term collaborators Giulia, Gianmarco, and Aris, we present DSP, a statistically-grounded measure for polarization. Selected for plenary oral presentation.
- News archive