Samet Oymak

Samet Oymak is a tenured associate professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and director of the SOTA Lab. His research spans machine learning, optimization, and statistics, with recent focus on foundations of language models, transformers, reasoning, and reinforcement learning. He received his MS (2011) and PhD (2015) in Electrical Engineering from Caltech under Babak Hassibi, and his BS in Electrical Engineering from Bilkent University (2009). Before academia he was a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley (Simons Institute and AMPLab, 2014-2015), a software engineer at Google (2015-2017), and a member of research staff at The Voleon Group (2017-2018), a systematic investment manager. He was an assistant professor at UC Riverside (2018-2023) before joining Michigan. He won a silver medal at the 2005 International Mathematical Olympiad representing Turkiye.

Notes5

• Quant employment verification: CONFIRMED. Samet Oymak held an actual role at The Voleon Group, a machine-learning-driven systematic/quantitative hedge fund (Jan 2017-Feb 2018) as noted on his own CV ('Member of Research Staff') and on his LinkedIn-indexed profile ('Researcher / Quant'). Employer classification: Voleon's own site describes it as applying machine learning to investment management across financial markets, i.e. a genuine quantitative investment firm. His CV additionally lists a prior 'Quantitative Analyst (Intern)' stint at The D. E. Shaw Group (a well-known quantitative hedge fund) that appears only in the index/LinkedIn lead, not in the CV role list, so that internship is recorded as index-sourced, not independently primary-confirmed.Feb 2018
• CV lists The Voleon Group (Jan 2017-Feb 2018) as 'Member of Research Staff'; Voleon is a machine-learning systematic hedge fund, so this is a genuine quantitative-finance role, not a student program or offer.Jan 2017
• Voleon's site states it applies machine learning to investment management in financial markets, confirming it operates in quantitative/systematic investing.Sep 2026
• NSF CAREER award (2021) for resource-efficient machine learning, received while assistant professor at UC Riverside.Jan 15, 2021
• Doctoral degree from Caltech under advisor Babak Hassibi; thesis 'Convex relaxation for low-dimensional representation: Phase transitions and limitations' won Caltech's Wilts Prize for Best Thesis in Electrical Engineering (2015).Jun 2015
• A 'Quantitative Analyst (Intern) at The D. E. Shaw Group' (Jun-Sep 2013) appears in the LinkedIn-index lead and ClickHouse enrichment but not in his own CV employment list; treated as index-only, unconfirmed by his primary CV.Jun 2013
• Google Research Scholar award (2022), Adobe Data Science Research award (2023), Amazon Research Award on Foundation Model Development (2024), and EECS Outstanding Achievement Award at Michigan (2025).Jan 2025
• Awarded the Simons-Berkeley Research Fellowship on Information Theory (Spring 2015) and was a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley's Simons Institute and AMPLab sponsored by Benjamin Recht (2014-2015).Sep 2014
• Silver medalist at the 2005 International Mathematical Olympiad in Merida, Mexico, representing Turkiye, per his own CV.Jul 2005
• Ranked 1st in the Electrical Engineering qualifying exam at Caltech in 2010 and received a Caltech Division Fellowship 2009-2010.Jan 2010
• Coached the Turkish Math Olympiad team for the IMO in 2008, per his CV.Jul 2008
• Presidential Fellowship awarded to Top 100 students in Turkey (2005-2009) and Bilkent University Undergraduate Fellowship; ranked Top 50 in the nationwide university entrance exam in 2005.Sep 2005