Professor Andrea Montanari, along with researchers from other institutions, have launched their first project: the Collaboration on the Theoretical Foundations of Deep Learning. The project is led by UC Berkeley researchers and has received five years of funding from NSF and Simons Foundation.

The project aims to gain a theoretical understanding of deep learning, which is making significant impacts across industry, commerce, science, and society.

Although deep learning is a widely used artificial intelligence approach for teaching computers to learn from data, its theoretical foundations are poorly understood, a challenge that the project will address. Understanding the mechanisms that underpin the practical success of deep learning will allow researchers to address its limitations, including its sensitivity to data manipulation.

The other institutions include UC Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Professor Andrea Montanari's research spans several disciplines including statistics, computer science, information theory, and machine learning.

Excerpted from "UC Berkeley to lead $10M NSF/Simons Foundation program to investigate theoretical underpinnings of deep learning", August 2020