Focus Period lund 2026
PhD Student
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology – KAUST (Saudi Arabia)
Kaja Gruntkowska is a PhD student at KAUST, advised by Prof. Peter Richtárik. Her research focuses on developing the algorithmic and mathematical foundations of randomized optimization, with a particular emphasis on distributed computing. She works on designing practically motivated algorithms with provable convergence guarantees, bridging theory and real-world applications to advance scalable machine learning. Her work has been recognized with the 2025 Google PhD Fellowship in Algorithms and Optimization. She completed her Bachelor’s in Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Warwick in 2022 and earned a Master’s in Statistical Science from the University of Oxford in 2023.