George Giapitzakis

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

The goal of my research is to develop a mathematical understanding of what and how modern deep learning models learn. Some topics of interest include:

• Deep Learning Theory: training dynamics, representation learning, reasoning capabilities of neural networks (with a particular focus on learnability of algorithmic tasks).
• Statistical Learning Theory: domain adaptation, Statistical Query learning.
• Optimization Theory: manifold optimization, implicit biases of (multi-objective) optimization algorithms, design and analysis of optimization algorithms.