Anish Acharya

Senior Research Scientist
Amazon Web Services
Austin, Texas

I am a Senior Research Scientist at AWS. I received my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2025, where I was advised by Inderjit S. Dhillon and Sujay Sanghavi. My research develops learning-theoretic foundations for recursive self-improvement in AI models and agent systems, especially when feedback is noisy, incomplete, or indirect.

Education

PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering

The University of Texas at Austin · Austin, TX · Fall 2019 – Spring 2025

Thesis: Robust and Efficient Learning in High Dimensions from Noisy Data

Advised by Inderjit S. Dhillon and Sujay Sanghavi

Committee: Alex Dimakis, Ludwig Schmidt, Nhat Ho
MS, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

University of California, Irvine · Irvine, CA · Fall 2013 – Fall 2014
BE, Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering

Jadavpur University · Kolkata, India · Spring 2009 – Spring 2013 · Highest Honors (First Class)

Research experience

Amazon · Austin, TX · Spring 2025 –
- Senior Research Scientist, AWS
University of Texas at Austin · Austin, TX · Fall 2019 – Spring 2025
- Graduate Research Assistant, ECE and CS
Eidon AI · Austin, TX · Summer 2024 – Winter 2025
- Head of AI Research
Meta · Menlo Park, CA · Summer 2021 – Fall 2022
- Student ResearcherFall 2022
- Research ScientistSummer 2022
- Student ResearcherFall 2021
- Research ScientistSummer 2021
Hosted by Li Jing, Bhargav Bhushanam, Dhruv Choudhary, Michael Rabbat
Microsoft · Redmond, WA · Summer 2020
- Research Scientist
Hosted by Kenichi Kumatani, Dimitrios Dimitriadis
Amazon · Sunnyvale, CA · Summer 2016 – Spring 2019
- Applied Scientist, AGISummer 2018 – Spring 2019
- Applied Scientist, Alexa AISpring 2018 – Summer 2018
- Applied Scientist, Alexa MLWinter 2017 – Spring 2018
- Software Development Engineer, Amazon DevicesSummer 2016 – Winter 2017
eBay · San Jose, CA · Fall 2015 – Summer 2016
- Data Scientist, Customer Insights and Analytics
Schlumberger · Houston, TX · Spring 2015 – Fall 2015
- Data Scientist
FEM Inc. · Los Angeles, CA · Winter 2015
- Data Engineer
Toyota Technological Institute Chicago · Chicago, IL · Summer 2014
- Visiting Research Assistant
Hosted by David McAllester

Teaching

Amazon Web Services · Austin, TX · Winter 2026 –
- Instructor, Embedding AI into Products: Evaluation-Driven DevelopmentAWS GenAI Training
  Summer 2026
- Instructor, Embedding AI into Products: Governance and GuardrailsAWS GenAI Training
  Spring 2026
University of Texas at Austin · Austin, TX · Fall 2023 – Fall 2025
- Instructor, Directed Reading Program: Natural Language Optimization
  Fall 2025
- Teaching Assistant, MIS 285N: Introduction to Deep Learning
  Spring 2024
- Teaching Assistant, MIS 185N: Emerging Trends in Machine Learning
  Spring 2024
- Teaching Assistant, ECE 461P: Data Science Principles
  Fall 2023
University of California Irvine · Irvine, CA · Fall 2013 – Fall 2014
- Teaching Assistant, EECS 50: Discrete Time Signals and Systems
  Fall 2014
- Teaching Assistant, EECS 280A: Advanced Engineering Electromagnetics
  Spring 2014
- Teaching Assistant, EECS 118: Knowledge Management and Software Eng.
  Winter 2014
- Teaching Assistant, EECS 119: Introduction to VLSI
  Fall 2013

Academic Service

Reviewer, Conferences
- International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
- Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)
- International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR)
- International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS)
- Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI)
- Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
- IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)
Reviewer, Journals
- Journal of Machine Learning Research (MIT Press)
- Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering (IEEE)
- Pattern Recognition Letters (Elsevier)
- Cognitive Neurodynamics (Springer Nature)
- Discover Electronics (Springer Nature)
Program Committee
- International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML)
- AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)

News

Fall, 2026 talkOral, Amazon ML Conference — Prompt Optimization
Fall, 2026 talkOral, Amazon ML Conference — Robust LLM Jury Paper
Summer, 2026 launchAI-Assisted Product Listing — AWS Summit NY Blog · Docs · Video
2026 launchAWS Partner Central — partner onboarding agent Docs
2026 launchAWS Partner Central — partner funding agent Docs
2026 launchAWS Partner Central MCP server Docs
Summer, 2026 paperRoPoLL: Robust Panel of LLM Judges — ICML 2026 OpenReview
2026 paperOrchOpt: orchestration architecture search — COLM 2026 OpenReview
Spring, 2026 awardSilver Reviewer, ICML 2026
Summer, 2026 talkMulti-Agent Optimization — AWS Marketplace Science, NYC Paper
Summer, 2026 talkAgent Optimization — AI Across AWS, Austin Paper
Summer, 2026 talkRobust LLM Jury — ICML 2026, Seoul Paper · Venue
Spring, 2026 talkPrompt Optimization — AWS Town Hall
Winter, 2026 roleInstructor, AWS — internal GenAI training
Spring, 2025 milestonePhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering — UT Austin Thesis
Spring, 2025 roleSenior Research Scientist, AWS
Fall, 2025 launchAWS Marketplace Agent Mode — re:Invent Product · Announcement
Fall, 2025 pressAgent Mode — ZDNet Article
Fall, 2025 pressAgent Mode — CRN Article
Fall, 2025 pressAgent Mode — The Ravit Show Video
Fall, 2025 pressAgent Mode — Inside Partnering Video
Summer, 2025 paperGeometric Median Matching — ICML 2025 OpenReview
Fall, 2025 talkRobust Sampling — AFSS, Seattle Paper
Fall, 2025 roleInstructor, UT Austin DiRP — NLO for LLMs
2024 paperNeural Distributed Source Coding — IEEE JSAIT IEEE Xplore
Summer, 2024 roleHead of AI Research, Eidon AI
2025 launchEidon State — multi-agent point-based system Docs
Fall, 2023 talkKeynote and panel — FOCA 2023, Austin Venue
Summer, 2022 patentUS 11393454 — Goal Oriented Dialog Generation Patent
Spring, 2022 paperBGMD: Block Coordinate Geometric Median Descent — AISTATS PMLR
Summer, 2022 paperNon-Convex Federated Learning with Momentum — UAI 2022 OpenReview
Summer, 2022 paperPositive Unlabeled Contrastive Learning — ICML 2022 arXiv
Fall, 2022 paperLDKP: keyphrases from long documents — CIKM 2022 arXiv
Spring, 2022 awardMeta PhD Research Fellowship Finalist Announcement
Fall, 2022 talkInvited talk — Meta Fundamental AI Research (FAIR)
Fall, 2022 talkInvited talk — Meta Ads ML Research
Spring, 2021 paperAlexa Conversations — NAACL 2021 ACL Anthology
2021 paperMultiple Gossip Steps in Federated Learning — IEEE TPDS IEEE Xplore
Fall, 2021 paperGupShup: code-switched summarization — EMNLP 2021 ACL Anthology
Spring, 2021 awardMeta PhD Research Grant, $100,000
2021 awardTravel Grants — UT Austin ML conferences and Simons Institute
Summer, 2021 roleResearch Scientist intern — Meta FAIR
Winter, 2020 patentUS 10872601 — on-device NLP via embedding compression Patent
Fall, 2020 pressAlexa Conversations — CNN Article
Summer, 2020 launchAlexa Conversations launched at Alexa Live Video · Docs
Summer, 2020 roleResearch Scientist intern — Microsoft Research
Summer, 2020 launchOpenMSFTL — open-source federated learning platform Code
Fall, 2019 milestoneBegan PhD at UT Austin
Spring, 2019 paperOnline Embedding Compression — AAAI 2019, spotlight Proceedings
Summer, 2019 pressAlexa Conversations — Forbes Article
Summer, 2019 pressAlexa Conversations — VentureBeat Video
Summer, 2019 pressAlexa Conversations — Amazon Science Article
Winter, 2019 pressEmbedding compression — Amazon Science Article
Winter, 2019 pressEmbedding compression — Packt Article
Winter, 2019 pressEmbedding compression — Hacker News Thread
Summer, 2018 talkOral — Amazon Machine Learning Conference, Seattle Paper
Summer, 2018 roleApplied Scientist, Amazon AGI
Spring, 2018 roleApplied Scientist, Alexa AI
Winter, 2017 roleApplied Scientist, Alexa ML
Summer, 2016 roleSoftware Development Engineer, Amazon Devices
Fall, 2015 roleData Scientist, eBay
Spring, 2015 roleData Scientist, Schlumberger
Winter, 2015 roleData Engineer, FEM Inc.
Fall, 2014 milestoneMS, Electrical and Computer Science — UC Irvine
2014 paperAnalog Butterworth filters, fractional domain — Elsevier ScienceDirect
2014 paperOptimum PID for Lorenz-like attractors — Elsevier ScienceDirect
Summer, 2014 roleVisiting Research Scientist — TTIC, for Toyota TRINA
Spring, 2013 milestoneBE with Highest Honors — Jadavpur University
2013 paperDelayed system stability via Bode's integral — ICCCI IEEE Xplore
2012 paperOptimum PID control of multi-wing attractors — ICCCNT IEEE Xplore
2012 paperFractional-order analog filter quality factor — ICCCNT IEEE Xplore
2012 paperANN identification of nonlinear systems — PDGC IEEE Xplore
2011 paperFirst publication — AC servo identification, ICEAS IEEE Xplore
Fall, 2009 awardINSPIRE Fellowship, Govt. of India
Fall, 2009 awardMHRD Fellowship for Academic Excellence, Govt. of India
Fall, 2009 milestoneBegan BE at Jadavpur University, Kolkata
Summer, 2007 awardMamraj Agarwal Rashtriya Puraskar — National Award
Spring, 2007 awardState Rank 5 of ~700,000 — West Bengal Board Article · Coverage