Carnegie Mellon University faculty members Aviral Kumar and Jun-Yan Zhu have been named 2024 Samsung AI Researchers of the Year. The award, which includes $30,000 in prize money, recognizes promising researchers who have made outstanding contributions to the field of artificial intelligence.

Kumar, who is an assistant professor, holds joint appointments in the Computer Science Department and Machine Learning Department. His research makes scalable and reliable offline and online reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms. He also investigates robotic learning and control, using foundation models for decision-making, and developing decision-making and RL tools to build better foundation models. Before joining CMU, Kumar earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley.

Zhu's research as an assistant professor in the Robotics Institute focuses on computer vision, computer graphics and machine learning. He leads the Generative Intelligence Lab, which studies the collaboration between human creators and generative models. This human-centered, generative modeling approach empowers creators with generative AI while retaining control over the creation process and data ownership. Zhu also earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, then completed postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For more on the award, visit the AI Researcher of the Year website.