George Giapitzakis | University of Waterloo

About Me

Hi there! I am a second year Master’s student at University of Waterloo’s Cheriton School of Computer Science where I am fortunate to be advised by professor Kimon Fountoulakis. My interests broadly span Theoretical Machine Learning, Statistical Learning Theory, and Optimization and their connections to deep learning. Before starting my master’s, I served as a Research Assistant at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore where I studied quantum attacks to post-quantum cryptosystems. Before that, I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in Pure Mathematics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, ranking first in my cohort.

I am a proud recipient of a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation, for the support of my master’s studies!

Research Interests

Machine Learning: deep learning theory, out-of-distribution generalization
Statistics: statistical learning theory, domain adaptation
Optimization: neural network training dynamics, convex optimization, optimization algorithms

News

[Oct. 7, 2025] New paper: On the Statistical Query Complexity of Learning Semiautomata: a Random Walk Approach.
[Sep. 18, 2025] The paper Learning to Add, Multiply, and Execute Algorithmic Instructions Exactly with Neural Networks was accepted at NeurIPS 2025.
[June 9, 2025] The paper Exact Learning of Permutations for Nonzero Binary Inputs with Logarithmic Training Size and Quadratic Ensemble Complexity was accepted at the 3rd Workshop on High-Dimensional Learning Dynamics (HiLD) at ICML 2025.
[May 23, 2025] New paper: Learning to Add, Multiply, and Execute Algorithmic Instructions Exactly with Neural Networks.
[May 1, 2025] The paper Positional Attention: Expressivity and Learnability of Algorithmic Computation was accepted at ICML 2025.
[Feb. 24, 2025] New paper: Exact Learning of Permutations for Nonzero Binary Inputs with Logarithmic Training Size and Quadratic Ensemble Complexity.
[Feb. 4, 2025] New paper: Positional Attention: Expressivity and Learnability of Algorithmic Computation.
[Jan. 28, 2025] This summer I will visit ETH Zurich as a Student Summer Reseach Fellow (SSRF)!
[Oct. 17, 2024] New paper: On the practicality of quantum sieving algorithms for the shortest vector problem .
[Sept. 2024] I was awarded the Onassis Foundation Scholarship! 🎉
[Sept. 2024] I was awarded the David R. Cheriton Graduate Scholarship! 🎉
[Sept. 2024] I was awarded the International Master’s Award of Excellence scholarship! 🎉