Dr Edwin Bonilla Pabon
Science Leader for Foundational Machine Learning
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Biography
Edwin Bonilla is a Senior Principal Research Scientist and Science Leader for Foundational Machine Learning in the Analytics and Decision Sciences program at CSIRO, Australia. He also holds an Honorary Associate Professor position at the Australian National University (ANU).
Before joining CSIRO, Edwin was a Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney, a Senior Researcher at National ICT Australia (NICTA), and a Research Associate at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He obtained a PhD in Informatics and an MSc in Artificial Intelligence with Distinction from the University of Edinburgh.
Edwin’s research focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI), probabilistic machine learning, Bayesian inference, causal discovery, and uncertainty-aware AI systems. His work spans scalable inference, Gaussian processes, Bayesian optimization, experimental design, and structure learning, with applications in scientific discovery, robotics, climate science, and complex dynamical systems.
More recently, his research has explored foundation models for causal discovery, probabilistic approaches to adaptive experimentation, and scientific AI for large-scale decision systems under uncertainty.
His broader research vision is to make modern probabilistic machine learning and AI a fundamental component of decision-making and scientific discovery. He publishes regularly at leading machine learning and AI venues including NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR. His work is widely cited and has been recognised through oral presentations at top machine learning conferences and test-of-time awards in machine learning systems research.
Other Interests
- Climate modelling
Academic Qualifications
-
2008
PhD in Informatics
The University of Edinburgh (UK) -
2004
MSc in Artificial Intelligence with Distinction
The University of Edinburgh (UK) -
2001
BSc in Computer Science, Summa Cum Laude
Universidad Industrial de Santander (Colombia)
Achievements and Awards
-
2025-2025
Oral Presentation (top 1% of submissions)
International Conference on Machine Learning -
2023-2023
Best Student Research Paper Award
29th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining -
2019-2019
Outstanding Contribution: Variational Graph Convolutional Networks
NeurIPS Workshop on Graph Representation Learning -
2019-2019
Test-of-time Paper Award
International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization -
2017-2017
Test-of-time Paper Award
International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization
Current Roles
-
Senior Principal Research Scientist
CSIRO -
Science Leader
Foundational Machine Learning -
Project Co-lead
Causal Inference in High Dimensional Multi-scale Systems (AI4M) -
Associate Professor (Honorary)
Australian National University
Professional Experiences
-
2020-2022
Group Leader
Machine Learning Research Group (CSIRO's Data61) -
2020-2022
Activity Leader
MLAI FSP (CSIRO) -
2019-2021
Team Leader
Foundations and Methods (Machine Learning Research Group, CISRO's Data61) -
2018-2023
Principal Research Scientist
CSIRO's Data61 -
2014-2018
Senior Lecturer
The University of New South Wales -
2010-2014
Senior Researcher
NICTA -
2010-2015
Adjunct Research Fellow
Australian National University -
2007-2009
Research Associate
The University of Edinburgh (UK)
Professional Areas
Related links
Publications
ORCID 0000-0002-9904-2408
We have publications by Dr Edwin Bonilla Pabon
Published data & software
We have published items by Dr Edwin Bonilla Pabon