Taco S. Cohen

Curriculum Vitae

Contact &Informationta.co.nl
Google Scholartaco.cohen@gmail.com

ResearchInterests• Reinforcement learning, language models, code generation.
• Geometric deep learning, equivariant networks; scientific & medical applications.
• Generative models & data compression.
• Mathematical foundations of AI.
• Causality.

Education

Universiteit van Amsterdam
PhD in Machine Learning

2013–2021• Cum laude.
• Advisor: prof. dr. Max Welling.
• Thesis “Equivariant Convolutional Networks”.
• Committee: Geoffrey Hinton, Erik Verlinde, Michael Bronstein, Risi Kondor,
Erik Bekkers, Leo Dorst, Joris Mooij.
Universiteit van Amsterdam
M.Sc. Artificial Intelligence

2011–2013• Cum laude, GPA: 9.3 / 10.
• Thesis: “Learning Transformation Groups and their Invariants”.
Supervisor: prof. dr. Max Welling.
Won the university-wide UvA Thesis Prize, 2014.
Universiteit Utrecht
B.Sc., Computer Science

2007–2010• Cum Laude, GPA: 4.0 / 4.0.
• Elective courses in AI, Cognitive Neuroscience and Human Perception.
ProfessionalExperience

Meta
Research Scientist

2024 – Now• Working on RL & LLMs for code generation
Qualcomm Research Netherlands
Research Scientist
Principal EngineerSenior Staff Engineer
Staff Engineer

2021 – 2023
2019 – 2021
2017 – 2019

• Leading the interactive learning team.
• Previously founded and led the generative modelling & data compression teamand grew it to ∼ 12 people, developed state-of-the art neural video/speech codecs& deployed them on device.
• Co-Supervising several PhD students working on geometric deep learning, equivariance, causality & code generation: Daniil Cherniavskii, Pim de Haan, Gabriele
Cesa, Natasha Butt, Phillip Lippe, Adeel Pervez, Maurice Weiler, Berkay Kicanaoglu
1 of 2• Intern (co)-supervision: Ekdeep Lubana, Risto Vuorio, David Romero, Yura
Perugachi Diaz, Iris Huijben, Emiel Hoogeboom, Adam Golinsky, Mirgahney
Mohamed, Yadong Lu, Jongha Jon Ryu, Vijay Veerabadran• Actively participating in external/academic collaborations.
Scyfer (acquired)Co-founder

05/2013 – 08/2017• Machine learning startup specialized in deep active learning.
• Developed data-efficient deep learning & active learning technologies.
• The company served many high-profile clients in medical, social media, retail,finance, broadcasting, manufactoring, telecommunications, and other industries.
• Acquired by Qualcomm in 2017.
OpenAIResearch Intern

11/2016 – 03/2017

Google DeepMindResearch Intern

05/2016 – 08/2016• Semi-supervised learning of equivariant representations, with prof. Geoff Hinton.
Several indie game studios
Freelance programmer
TeachingExperience

2005–2010

Universiteit van Amsterdam
Teaching Assistant2011 – 2016

• Courses: calculus, statistics, computer vision, datastructures, machine learningI, machine learning II.
• BSc thesis supervision: Carla Groenland.
• MSc thesis or project supervision: Luisa Zintgraf, Jorn Peters, Emiel Hogeboom,Marcel Boersma, Liam Schoneveld, Jonas Koehler, Tim Davidson, Pim de Haan,Mario Geiger, Maurice Weiler, Jim Winkens, Jasper Linmans, Marysia Winkels,Ties van Rozendaal.
Prizes andAwards• Kees Schouhamer Immink prize for my PhD thesis, from the Koninklijke Hollandsche
Maatschapij der Wetenschappen (Royal Dutch Scientific Society, est. 1752), 2022.
• Graduated cum laude for BSc, MSc and PhD.
• MIT 35 innovators under 35 Europe, 2018.
• ICLR 2018 Best Paper Award for “Spherical CNNs”.
• Google PhD Fellowship, 2017.
• Best review award ICLR 2017, Outstanding Reviewer award ICML 2018 and NeurIPS2021, TMLR Expert Reviewer 2023.
• University-wide thesis prize of the University of Amsterdam, for my master’s thesis“Learning Transformation Groups and their Invariants”.
• World champion mobile phone throwing 2007 (Freestyle category).

ServiceEuropean Lab for Learning and Intelligent SystemsCo-Director

2020 – Now• Co-director of the ELLIS Geometric Deep Learning program.
• Connecting the European GDL community at regular workshops.
ReviewerReviewer

2014 – Now• Regular reviewer at ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, TMLR. Occasional reviewer forICCV, ECCV, AAAI,TPAMI, JMLR

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