Lazar Atanackovic, PhD

Area of Study / Keywords

Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Generative Models Computational Biology Systems Biology Single-cell Dynamical Systems

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About

I am an incoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and in the Department of Biochemistry. Currently, I am a Postdoc at the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Center of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and will be starting full-time at U of A March 2026. 

I received my Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. During this time, I was a graduate research student at the Vector Institute and a member of the Probabilistic and Statistical Inference Group supervised by Brendan Frey and co-supervised by Bo Wang. I also spent time as a research intern at Recursion Pharmaceuticals / Valence Labs, Deep Genomics, and Mila - Quebec AI Institute. 

My research focuses on developing machine learning methods for understanding and modeling natural (physical) systems from data, with a particular focus on cellular and molecular biology. My interests include generative modeling (flows and diffusion), deep learning, causality, single-cell biology, and recently, proteins & molecules.

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Research

I lead the Atanackovic Lab at the University of Alberta! We are a research group focused on developing cutting-edge machine learning methods for understanding and modeling natural (physical) systems from data, with an emphasis on cellular and molecular systems. Our research broadly spans machine learning, generative modeling, causality, systems biology, single-cell biology, and most recently protein & molecule design. We combine theoretical advances with practical applications to push the boundaries of what’s possible in computational biology and AI.

I am currently recruiting MSc and PhD students for Summer and Fall 2026! If you are interested in working on cutting edge problems at the intersection of machine learning, biology, and medicine, explore the Research Areas and Join Us pages on the lab website. 

Katarina Petrović, Lazar Atanackovic, Viggo Moro, Kacper Kapuśniak, İsmail İlkan Ceylan, Michael Bronstein, Avishek Joey Bose, Alexander Tong

NeurIPS. 2025 December;

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Noah El Rimawi-Fine*, Adam Stecklov*, Lucas Nelson, Mathieu Blanchette, Alexander Tong, Stephen Y. Zhang, Lazar Atanackovic

arXiv. 2025 October;

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Lazar Atanackovic*, Xi Zhang*, Brandon Amos, Mathieu Blanchette, Leo J. Lee, Yoshua Bengio, Alexander Tong, Kirill Neklyudov

ICLR. 2025 April;

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Marta Skreta*, Lazar Atanackovic*, Avishek Joey Bose, Alexander Tong, Kirill Neklyudov

ICLR [Spotlight]. 2025 April;

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Lazar Atanackovic, Emmanuel Bengio

TMLR. 2025 April;

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Kirill Neklyudov*, Rob Brekelmans*, Alexander Tong, Lazar Atanackovic, Qiang Liu, Alireza Makhzani

ICML. 2024 July;

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Alexander Tong*, Nikolay Malkin*, Kilian Fatras*, Lazar Atanackovic, Yanlei Zhang, Guillaume Huguet, Guy Wolf, Yoshua Bengio

AISTATS. 2024 May;

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Lazar Atanackovic*, Alexander Tong*, Bo Wang, Leo J. Lee, Yoshua Bengio, Jason Hartford

NeurIPS. 2023 December;

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