Reza Zadeh (Persian: رضا زاده) is an American computer scientist and technology leader who works in the field of machine learning. He is a part-time professor at Stanford University, the chief executive officer of Matroid, and a member of the founding team at Databricks. His work involves studying machine learning, using computers together to solve problems, and applying mathematics to real-world challenges. He has received awards such as the KDD Best Paper Award and the Gene Golub Outstanding Thesis Award from Stanford University.

Work

The Princeton University ModelNet challenge is a competition that asks participants to identify 3D computer design models and sort them into groups based on what they represent. In 2016, Matroid was among the top teams in this competition. The computer programs used in this work were later added to Matroid's product.

Reza worked with his doctor at Stanford Hospital to develop a computer program that automatically finds signs of Glaucoma in 3D images of the eye. This program performed better than human doctors and is now used to help doctors make diagnoses at the hospital.

In 2016, Reza started a company called Matroid, Inc. to turn computer vision research into products for industries like manufacturing and industrial sensors. Matroid received $13.5 million in funding from companies such as New Enterprise Associates and Intel.

Reza is one of the authors of Apache Spark, especially its Machine Learning library called MLlib. Through open source, his work has been used in both industrial and academic computing systems. He was also a member of the founding team at Databricks, the company that helps businesses use Spark.

Reza developed the machine learning method used in Twitter's "Who-To-Follow" project and later made it available for free use. During this time, he also led research that used machine learning to track earthquake damage. This work received attention from the media as an example of how social media can provide real-time information during disasters.

At the G7 forum in Italy, Pope Francis said that humanity faces serious dangers, including wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and the overuse of artificial intelligence, which threatens jobs worldwide. This made him the first pope in history to attend the G7 meeting, which brings together leaders from the world's largest economies. Pope Francis met with world leaders at the Vatican on June 14-15. During this meeting, he and Reza discussed ways to use artificial intelligence responsibly.

Personal

Reza was born during the Iran–Iraq War in Ahvaz, a city that was under attack. His family moved to London, England, where Reza lived until he was 17. Then, his family moved to Toronto, Canada, and Reza earned a degree from the University of Waterloo. At age 18, he often visited the United States to work with the Google Research team. Later, he moved to the US to get a master's degree from Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD from Stanford University. All of his degrees were in Computer Science and Mathematics.