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Current Position

EPFL AI Center and Swiss AI Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow

2026–present

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) · Lausanne, Switzerland

  • Jointly hosted by Volkan Cevher's LIONS group and Martin Jaggi's MLO group.
  • Developing theoretically grounded methods to make large-scale AI training faster and more resource-efficient, with emphasis on distributed and asynchronous optimization, communication efficiency, and model parallelism.

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science

2023–2025

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) · Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

M.Sc. in Applied Statistics and Data Science

2021–2023

Yerevan State University · Yerevan, Armenia

B.Sc. in Informatics and Applied Mathematics

2017–2021

Yerevan State University · Yerevan, Armenia

Research Experience

Visiting Researcher, hosted by Yi-Shuai Niu

9–22 Mar 2025

Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (BIMSA) · Beijing, China

  • Collaborated on server-assisted federated learning.
  • Delivered invited seminars at Peking University (PKU), Beihang University (BUAA), and BIMSA.

Researcher, Martin Grigoryan's group

Apr–Aug 2023

Yerevan State University · Yerevan, Armenia

  • Investigated universal functions for the Vilenkin and Haar systems across different function spaces.

Research Intern, Peter Richtárik's group

Jun 2022–Jan 2023

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) · Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

  • Contributed to GradSkip (TMLR), a communication-efficient local optimization method with improved complexity.

Machine Learning Researcher

Jan 2022–Aug 2023

YerevaNN · Yerevan, Armenia

  • Researched optimization methods for federated learning.

Industry Experience

Co-Founder

Jul 2021–Jun 2022

OnePick · Yerevan, Armenia

  • Built an MVP that helped content creators and marketers select photos matching their text descriptions.
  • Advanced through FAST's InVent 2.0: team formation, ideation, product development, and pitching.
  • Secured initial funding and continued development beyond the program.

Backend Developer

Jul–Sep 2021

EXALT Technologies Ltd. · Remote (Yerevan, Armenia)

  • Contributed to backend development for a Nutanix project.

Machine Learning Research Engineer

Jun–Jul 2021

Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST) · Yerevan, Armenia

  • Developed machine-learning models for fraud detection.
  • Built machine-learning and statistical models for data-driven forecasting.

Software Engineer in Test

Sep 2019–Jan 2021

Picsart · Yerevan, Armenia

  • Developed test-automation solutions across several mobile and web applications.
  • Collaborated across engineering, QA, product, and business teams to diagnose and resolve product issues.
  • Proposed improvements to DevOps processes and Jenkins CI pipelines.

Awards

Top Reviewer, NeurIPS 2026

Oct 2026

EPFL AI Center and Swiss AI Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship

Jun 2026

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

  • Competitive fellowship supporting independent research, with an additional travel fund (CHF 5,000 annually)

CEMSE Dean's List Award

May 2025

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

  • Awarded for excellent academic and research performance (USD 2,500)

Dean's Award

Sep 2023

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)

  • Merit-based award for selected incoming KAUST students (USD 18,000 over three years)

Outstanding Final Project Award

May 2021

Yerevan State University

  • Recognized for an outstanding bachelor's thesis (one of 6 recipients among 250+ students)

Reviewing

TMLR (2024–present); ICLR (2025, 2027); NeurIPS, ICML, and OPTML (2026); SIMODS and JMLR (2024).