Roni Rosenfeld (
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
: רוני רוזנפלד) is an
Israeli-American
Israeli Americans () are Americans who are of full or partial Israeli descent.
The Israeli-American community, while predominantly Jewish, also includes various ethnic and religious minorities reflective of Israel's diverse demographics. This c ...
computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science.
Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...
and
computational epidemiologist, currently serving as the head of th
Machine Learning Departmentat
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...
.
He is an international expert in
machine learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...
,
infectious disease forecasting,
statistical language modeling and
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...
.
Education
Rosenfeld received his B.Sc. in mathematics and physics from
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...
in 1985. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1994. While a graduate student, he developed and open-sourced a statistical language-modeling toolkit to allow anyone to create statistical language models from their own corpora and experiment with and extend the toolkit's capabilities. The toolkit has been used by more than 100 NLP laboratories in more than 20 countries.
Rosenfeld's Ph.D. thesis, ''A Maximum Entropy Approach to Adaptive Statistical Language Modeling'', was advised by
Raj Reddy
Dabbala Rajagopal "Raj" Reddy (born 13 June 1937) is an Indian-American computer scientist and a winner of the Turing Award. He is one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mel ...
and
Xuedong Huang and won the 2001 Computer, Speech and Language award for "Most Influential Paper in the Last 5 Years."
Career
Shortly after receiving his Ph.D., Rosenfeld joined the faculty of the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science as an assistant professor. He was promoted to the rank of associate professor in 1999 and received tenure in 2001.
In 2005 he was promoted to professor of language technologies, machine learning computer science and computational biology in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Rosenfeld also holds adjunct appointments at the
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is a medical school of the University of Pittsburgh, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The School of Medicine, also known as Pitt Med, encompasses both a medical program, offering the doctor of ...
, department of computational and systems biology.
From 2002 to 2003, Rosenfeld was a visiting professor at the
University of Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong (HKU) is a public research university in Pokfulam, Hong Kong. It was founded in 1887 as the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese by the London Missionary Society and formally established as the University of ...
.
Rosenfeld is the director of Carnegie Mellon's Machine Learning for Social Good (ML4SG) program. He has held educational leadership positions in a variety of programs, including the M.S. in computational finance (1997–1999), graduate computational and statistical learning (2001–2003), M.S. in machine learning (2017) and undergraduate minor in machine learning.
Rosenfeld was appointed Head of Carnegie Mellon's Machine Learning Department in 2018.
Research
Rosenfeld's research interests include epidemiological forecasting, information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), and machine learning for social good.
Epidemiological forecasting
Rosenfeld is a world expert in epidemiological forecasting. He founded and directs the Delphi research group, which has won most of the epidemiological forecasting challenges organized by the U.S.
CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and is headquartered in Atlanta, ...
and other U.S. government agencies. In December 2016, the
CDC
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and is headquartered in Atlanta, ...
named his group the "Most Accurate Forecaster" for 2015–2016, and in October 2017, the Delphi group's two systems took the top two spots in the 2016-2017 flu forecasting challenge. The CDC recognized Rosenfeld's Delphi group at Carnegie Mellon University as having contributed the most accurate national-, regional-, and state-level influenza-like illness forecasts and national-level hospitalization forecasts to the site. In 2019, the CDC recognized forecasts provided by the Delphi group at Carnegie Mellon as having been the most accurate for five seasons in a row, and named the Delphi group an Influenza Forecasting Center of Excellence, a five-year designation that includes $3 million in research funding.
Rosenfeld describes his forecasting research goal as "to make epidemiological forecasting as universally accepted and useful as weather forecasting is today." His recent work in the area has focused on selecting high value epidemiological forecasting targets (e.g.
Influenza
Influenza, commonly known as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by influenza viruses. Symptoms range from mild to severe and often include fever, runny nose, sore throat, muscle pain, headache, coughing, and fatigue. These sympto ...
and
Dengue
Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne disease caused by dengue virus, prevalent in tropical and subtropical areas. Asymptomatic infections are uncommon, mild cases happen frequently; if symptoms appear, they typically begin 3 to 14 days after ...
); creating baseline forecasting methods for them; establishing metrics for measuring and tracking forecasting accuracy; estimating the limits of forecastability for each target; and identifying new sources of data that could be helpful to the forecasting goal.
Honors and awards
*2017 Joel and Ruth Spira Teaching Award
*2017 CDC Influenza Forecasting Challenge "Most Accurate Forecaster"
*1992 Allen Newell Medal for Research Excellence
References
External links
Roni Rosenfeld at Carnegie MellonFlu Season is Here Why Didn't We See It Coming via WiredFlu Season Comes Around Computer Scientists Prepare & Make Predictions via WESAAI Helping Turn the Tide Against Flu in 2 Important Ways via NBCNewsWhen Will Flu Season Be Worst? These Researchers Think They Might Know via NewsWeekHow Bad Will the Flu Season Get? Forecasters Are Competing to Figure it Out via The ScientistCMU Receives 1M from Chicago Software Company to Fund Machine Learning Projects via TribliveHow funny messages from ‘Polly’ can fight Ebola via FuturityCMU Researchers Fine Tune Flu Season Forecasting via CampusTechnologyCMU is the world's best at predicting influenza activity via Pittsburgh Post-GazetteHow a Drunken Chipmunk Voice Helps Send a Public Service Message via NPRPhone game helps illiterate Pakistanis find employment via The Tartan*
Carnegie Mellon flu forecasting named CDC center of excellence via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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Tel Aviv University alumni
Carnegie Mellon University faculty
Machine learning researchers
American people of Israeli descent
1959 births
Living people