News Release
UC San Diego Computer Scientist Rose Yu Named 2025 Samsung AI Researcher of the Year
October 30, 2025
University of California San Diego computer science professor Rose Yu has been named a 2025 Samsung AI Researcher of the Year, in recognition of her groundbreaking research and contributions to the field of artificial intelligence.
At the recent Samsung AI Forum 2025, Yu was honored for this achievement — presented by the Turing Award laureate Yoshua Bengio. The award was provided through Samsung’s Device Solutions (DS) Division.
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| UC San Diego computer science professor Rose Yu receives the Samsung AI Researcher of 2025 Award from Yoshua Bengio. |
Yu’s research focuses on advancing machine learning for large-scale spatiotemporal data. A particular emphasis is on physics-guided deep learning, which is a hybrid framework to integrate first principles into deep neural networks.
She is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award (PECASE) — the highest honor given by the White House to early career scientists, DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA), Army Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (ECASE), NSF CAREER Award, Hellman Fellow Award, several industry faculty research awards, and multiple best paper awards. She was named as MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 in AI.
“Both the fundamentals and applications of AI continue to advance incredibly quickly. It’s critical that researchers in academia and the private and public sectors make time and space to work together to advance AI applications and prepare the workforce capable of driving AI forward to transform society and shape the future,” said Yu. “I am honored by this recognition from Samsung, and I look forward to advancing collaborations across many different fields.”
Yu is a key member of the vibrant AI research and teaching community within UC San Diego, with her home base in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. She is a prolific researcher, and just a few examples of recent work are noted below.
Yu is a critical part of the UC San Diego research team that created a model driven by generative AI that will help prevent injuries in athletes and also aid in rehabilitation after an injury.
Earlier in 2025, Yu served as one of the two primary organizers of the GenAI Summit at UC San Diego. This event, organized by the computer science department, brought together researchers from many different disciplines across campus, the country and the world to discuss opportunities and challenges that are emerging quickly as generative AI grows ever more present in our lives.
Earlier in 2025, Yu was the featured expert in an article in Quanta Magazine describing her leading efforts to leverage physics to improve deep learning.
In December 2024, Yu and colleagues presented new work highlighting how algorithms behind generative AI tools like DallE, when combined with physics-based data, can be used to develop better ways to model the Earth’s climate. The computer scientists in Seattle and San Diego used this combination to create a model that is capable of predicting climate patterns over 100 years 25 times faster than the state of the art.
Media Contacts
Daniel Kane
Jacobs School of Engineering
858-534-3262
dbkane@ucsd.edu