Bistra Dilkina

Dr. Bistra Dilkina is an associate professor of computer science as well as industrial and systems engineering at the University of Southern California, co-director of the USC Center for AI in Society, and the inaugural Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Early Career Chair at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Her research and teaching are centered around the integration of machine learning and discrete optimization, with a strong focus on AI applications in computational sustainability and social impact. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2012 and was a post-doctoral associate at the Institute for Computational Sustainability. Her research has contributed significant advances to machine-learning-guided combinatorial solving, including mathematical programming and planning, as well as decision-focused learning where combinatorial reasoning is integrated into machine-learning pipelines. Her applied research in Computational Sustainability spans using AI for wildlife conservation, using AI to understand the impacts of climate change in terms of energy, water, habitat and human migration, and using AI to optimize fortification of lifeline infrastructures for disaster resilience. Her work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, DHS Center of Excellence Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute, Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Microsoft, and Qualcomm, among others. She has over 90 publications and has co-organized or served as a chair to numerous workshops, tutorials, and special tracks at major conferences.