Petar Veličković

Research Scientist

Work Experience


2019–present

Google DeepMind, London, United Kingdom

Staff Research Scientist

Senior Research Scientist (2020-2021)

Research Scientist (2019–2020)

$\sim$ Learning at Scale, with Charles Blundell


2021–present

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Affiliated Lecturer, Department of Computer Science and Technology

Associate, Clare Hall

$\sim$ Co-teaching the course on Geometric Deep Learning for the MPhil in Advanced Computer Science, alongside Pietro Liò


2016–2019

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Research Assistant in Computational Biology

$\sim$ Artificial Intelligence Group, with Pietro Liò


Jul–Sep 2018

Mila – Québec Artificial Intelligence Institute, Montréal, Canada

Visiting Researcher

$\sim$ Unsupervised graph representation learning, with Devon Hjelm and Yoshua Bengio


Jul–Aug 2017

Mila – Québec Artificial Intelligence Institute, Montréal, Canada

Visiting Researcher

$\sim$ Graph neural networks, with Adriana Romero and Yoshua Bengio


Jul–Oct 2016

Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Research Associate

$\sim$ Deep learning for massive-scale medical time series data analysis, with Nic Lane


Jun–Sep 2015

Jane Street Europe Limited, London, United Kingdom / New York, United States

Software Developer Intern

$\sim$ Financial software development in OCaml


Jun–Aug 2014

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Undergraduate Researcher

$\sim$ Computer Architecture Group, with Simon Moore


Jun–Sep 2013

Microsoft Development Center Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia

Intern Software Design Engineer

$\sim$ SQL Server Team, with Aleksandar Tomić


Education


2016–2019

Trinity College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Computer Science

$\sim$ “The resurgence of structure in deep neural networks”, supervised by Pietro Liò


2012–2015

Trinity College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Master of Arts (MA Hons. (Cantab.)), Computer Science

$\sim$ First Class Honours


2008–2012

Matematička gimnazija, Belgrade, Serbia

Mathematical Grammar School

$\sim$ Specialised Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science curriculum


Honours and Awards


Jul 2023

Best Paper Award, Honolulu, United States

ICML 2023 Workshop on Knowledge and Logical Reasoning in the Era of Data-driven Learning (KLR)

$\sim$ Awarded for “Neural Priority Queues for Graph Neural Networks”


Dec 2022

Best Paper Award, New Orleans, United States

NeurIPS 2022 Workshop on New Frontiers in Graph Learning (GLFrontiers)

$\sim$ Awarded for “Expander Graph Propagation”


Apr 2022

Best Paper Finalist (Virtual)

ICLR 2022 Workshop on Anchoring Machine Learning in Classical Algorithmic Theory (GroundedML)

$\sim$ Awarded for “Continuous Neural Algorithmic Planners”


Jun 2021

OGB-LSC Top-3 Winner (Virtual)

Open Graph Benchmark Large-Scale Challenge @ KDD Cup 2021

$\sim$ Ranked in the top three entries in large-scale node classification and graph classification tracks


May 2021

ICLR 2021 Outstanding Reviewer Award (Virtual)

Ninth International Conference on Learning Representations

$\sim$ Awarded to the top reviewers for ICLR 2021


Feb 2021

Best Short Paper Runner-Up (Virtual)

AAAI-21 International Workshop on Health Intelligence (W3PHIAI 2021)

$\sim$ Awarded for “Predicting Patient Outcomes with Graph Representation Learning”


Jul 2020

ICML 2020 Top Reviewer Award (Virtual)

Thirty-seventh International Conference on Machine Learning

$\sim$ Awarded to the top 33% reviewers for ICML 2020


Dec 2019

NeurIPS 2019 Best Reviewer Award, Vancouver, Canada

Thirty-third Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems

$\sim$ Awarded to the top 400 reviewers for NeurIPS 2019


May 2019

ICLR 2019 Travel Award, New Orleans, United States

The 7th International Conference on Learning Representations


Apr 2019

TeleSign Datathon Winner, Belgrade, Serbia

TeleSign

$\sim$ Winning entry for Telco traffic classification


Jan 2019

Bronze Medal, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Hack Cambridge 4D (Major League Hacking event)

$\sim$ Member of team N-hance (Ranked 3rd)


May 2018

ICLR 2018 Travel Award, Vancouver, Canada

The 6th International Conference on Learning Representations


Dec 2017

NIPS TSW 2017 Travel Award, Long Beach, United States

NIPS 2017 Time Series Workshop


Nov 2017

ACM-ICPC NWERC 2017 – Gold Medal (Coach), Bath, United Kingdom

Association for Computing Machinery

$\sim$ Team Me[N]ta∭ca (Ranked 1st); ACM-ICPC 2017 World Finalist


Oct 2017

Wiseman Prize, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge

$\sim$ Awarded for commendable contributions to the work of the Department


Apr 2017

Finalist, Paris, France

Google Hash Code 2017

$\sim$ Member of team МЕТАШСА (Ranked 5th)


Jan 2017

Bronze Medal, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Hack Cambridge Recurse (Major League Hacking event)

$\sim$ Member of team facejack (Ranked 3rd)


Nov 2016

ACM-ICPC NWERC 2016 – Silver Medal, Bath, United Kingdom

Association for Computing Machinery

$\sim$ Member of team Me[∰]tallica (Ranked 8th)


Jan 2016

Finalist, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Hack Cambridge (Major League Hacking event)

$\sim$ Member of team Viral (Ranked Top-7)


Nov 2014

ACM-ICPC NWERC 2014 – Bronze Medal, Linköping, Sweden

Association for Computing Machinery

$\sim$ Member of team Beuler (Ranked 12th)


Jul 2014

Senior Scholar, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Trinity College, University of Cambridge

$\sim$ Elected due to high performance in the Computer Science Tripos, Part IB


Jul 2013

Junior Scholar, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Trinity College, University of Cambridge

$\sim$ Elected due to high performance in the Computer Science Tripos, Part IA


May 2012

Cambridge Overseas Trust Scholarship, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Cambridge Commonwealth, European & International Trust

$\sim$ Three-year maintenance scholarship, award value £7,000 per annum


May 2012

Trinity Overseas Bursary, Cambridge, United Kingdom

Trinity College, University of Cambridge

$\sim$ Three-year tuition scholarship, award value £24,543 per annum