New Professors at the Institute for Statistics and Mathematics

Professor of Foundations of Operations Research - Ivana Ljubić

Ivana Ljubić earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Vienna University of Technology in 2004 and completed her habilitation in Operations Research at the University of Vienna in 2013. Before pursuing her academic career, she spent two years working in industry in the field of portfolio optimization. She then worked at the University of Vienna until 2015; since September 2015, she has been a professor of operations research at ESSEC Business School in Paris. Her visiting appointments have included the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” the University of Maryland, the Technical University of Berlin, the Technical University of Dortmund, and the University of Paris-Dauphine. Her key research areas include combinatorial optimization, network design, optimization under uncertainty, and bilevel optimization. She develops methods of mixed-integer linear and nonlinear programming for applications in the fields of telecommunications, transportation, logistics, data and distribution networks, social networks, and bioinformatics. Ljubić serves on the editorial boards of international journals and has received several awards, including the DOC and APART fellowships from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Hertha Firnberg Fellowship from the Austrian Science Fund. She is a member of the Department of Finance, Accounting, and Statistics.

Professor of Machine Learning Foundations - Michael Mühlebach

Michael Mühlebach studied mechanical engineering at ETH Zurich and specialized in robotics, systems engineering, and control engineering during his master’s program. In 2018, he earned his Ph.D. at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control at ETH Zurich. He then moved to the University of California, Berkeley, as a postdoctoral researcher. Until 2026, the Swiss researcher will lead the independent research group “Learning and Dynamical Systems” at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, Germany. His primary research focus is the intersection of machine learning, control theory, and optimization. He has received several awards for his scientific achievements, including the “Outstanding D-MAVT Bachelor Award,” the Willi Studer Prize, the ETH Medal, and the HILTI Prize. He has been a Branco Weiss Fellow since 2018; in 2020, he received an Emmy Noether Fellowship; and in 2024, he received an Amazon Fellowship. He serves on the editorial board of the renowned journal “Foundations and Trends in Machine Learning.” He joins the Department of Finance, Accounting, and Statistics.