Vikash Mansinghka

Principal Research Scientist, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Vikash Mansinghka is a principal research scientist at MIT, where he leads the Probabilistic Computing Project. His group is building a new generation of probabilistic computing systems that integrate probability and randomness into the basic building blocks of software and hardware. They have discovered that this approach leads to surprising new AI capabilities, and are exploring them via a combination of academic research and entrepreneurship. They also carry out basic research on the mathematical foundations of probabilistic computation. They make our work as freely available as possible via open-source software, workshops, and online educational materials. Additionally, they collaborate with industry and non-profit partners on applications in the public interest. Mansinghka earned an SB in mathematics and computer science, MEng in computer science, and a PhD in computation, from MIT. Mansinghka co-founded two startups: Prior Knowledge and Empirical Systems, later acquired by Salesforce and Tableau, respectively.

Selected Publications

Media