Elina Robeva is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Mathematics at UBC and is a member of the Institute of Applied Mathematics and CAIDA. She received her Ph.D. in mathematics from UC Berkley and previously worked as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mathematics and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at MIT.

In 2023, Robeva was one of the recipients of the Andre Aisenstadt Prize, which recognizes outstanding research results in pure or applied mathematics by a young Canadian mathematician.

Her work involves developing machine learning and optimization methods for causal inference in areas with complex dependencies in data — helping to determine cause-and-effect relationships in datasets with many interacting variables.

Some of Robeva’s recent collaborations include finding casual links among variables in climate data and exploring the environmental impact that might come from agricultural development and other projects. The support and funding from the Canada CIFAR AI Chair program will allow her to expand upon this type of work.

“I really love math and computing. I love algorithms and I love combinatorics … these are things I’ve always loved since high school. And application-wise, I’ve always been passionate about helping the world in some way,” she says.

“It's a great honour and also a great opportunity to be part of this amazing community. It also allows me to expand my group, which is great for me because I love training students and postdocs and working together with them.”