Sanmi Koyejo
Sanmi Koyejo is a computer scientist on the faculty of Stanford University’s Department of Computer Science who leads the Stanford Trustworthy AI Research (STAIR) lab, studying the evaluation and accountability of trustworthy AI, and is a co-founder of the AI security company Virtue AI.
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Key facts
2021Receiving the Skip Ellis Early Career Award
News headlines from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s computing school report that he received the 2021 Skip Ellis Early Career Award; the school also reported his NSF CAREER Award, for a project involving probabilistic models for neuroscience.[1]
April 2023Questioning “Emergent Abilities” in Large Models
On April 28, 2023, he and Rylan Schaeffer and Brando Miranda submitted the paper “Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage?” to arXiv, examining whether the so-called “emergent abilities” of large language models are real.[2]
December 2023Two Co-Authored Papers Win NeurIPS Outstanding Paper Awards
On December 11, 2023, NeurIPS announced its paper awards: the paper above received an outstanding main track paper award, and DecodingTrust, a benchmark work he co-authored, received an outstanding datasets and benchmarks paper award, with co-authors including Dawn SongDawn SongDawn Song is a UC Berkeley computer science professor and Berkeley RDI co-director researching computer security, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry and Bo LiBo LiBo Li researches trustworthy machine learning and is an Abbasi Associate Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a cofounder of Virtue AI.Open the full entry.[3]
2024Several Keynote Talks
According to his personal website, in 2024 he gave keynotes at conferences including the European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV 2024) and the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT); the website also says his group’s work on AI capabilities evaluation was cited in the 2024 Economic Report of the President.[4]
2025Receiving the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers
According to his personal website, he received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2025.[4]
August 2026Virtue AI Acquired by Fortinet
According to his personal website, he is a co-founder of Virtue AI, which develops enterprise solutions for measuring and mitigating AI safety and security risks.[4]
On August 17, 2026, the cybersecurity company Fortinet announced that it had acquired Virtue AI, describing it as focused on AI runtime protection, automated AI validation and security for autonomous AI systems, without disclosing financial terms; the announcement does not mention his role after the acquisition.[5]
As of October 2026: Faculty Member at Stanford University
He is on the faculty of Stanford University’s Department of Computer Science, where he leads the STAIR lab, with research spanning AI evaluation science, algorithmic accountability and privacy-preserving machine learning, applied in areas such as healthcare and scientific discovery; he is also an adjunct associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.[6][4][1]
His Stanford profile says he has received an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and serves as board president of Black in AI and on the board of directors of the Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation.[6]
Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts
Stanford University: Official website: https://www.stanford.edu/ (opens in a new window)[6]
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: Official website: https://illinois.edu/ (opens in a new window)[1]
Personal website: Public link: https://cs.stanford.edu/~sanmi/ (opens in a new window)[4]
Google Scholar: Public profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=EaaOeJwAAAAJ (opens in a new window)[4]
Sources
- Sanmi Koyejo (opens in a new window)
- Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage? (opens in a new window)
- Announcing the NeurIPS 2023 Paper Awards (opens in a new window)
- Sanmi Koyejo (opens in a new window)
- Fortinet Advances Continuous AI Protection with the Acquisition of Virtue AI (opens in a new window)
- Sanmi Koyejo's Profile (opens in a new window)