Dr Adilet Otemissov currently holds a postdoctoral scholar position in the maths department, School of Sciences and Humanities, Nazarbayev University.

Adilet is a young committed mathematician who wishes to further his academic experience and intends to attribute his future’s work to mathematical research and teaching. Adilet received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Nazarbayev University, a master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Manchester and a PhD degree in the field of Optimization from the University of Oxford in 2021. To pursue his PhD, he was awarded a competitive scholarship from the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence.

His doctoral research lies at the boundary between optimization and machine learning. While optimization techniques are widely used in machine learning, can machine learning techniques be used in optimization? Inspired by this question, his research investigates the effectiveness of a particular machine learning technique called ‘dimensionality reduction’ applied to a high-dimensional global optimization problem, a problem notorious for its scalability challenges. In his work, he demonstrates that these challenges can be significantly alleviated for a certain class of functions, in literature called functions with low effective dimensionality. These functions appear in applications such as neural networks, combinatorial optimization problems, climate modelling and complex engineering and physical simulations.

In his future research, he is considering to explore the effectiveness of random methods in optimization with possible applications in machine learning, engineering and climate modelling problems. In particular, he would like to develop a more scalable global optimization algorithm by combining random search techniques with local optimization techniques. 

Currently, Adilet is working on applications of stochastic methods in linear programming with the use of tools from extreme value theory in statistics. 

Throughout his teaching career, Adilet has engaged in different formats of teaching including peer tutoring, online teaching, one-to-one tutoring, teaching in small and big classrooms. His teaching experience includes lecturing Linear Programming, Graph Theory, Discrete Mathematics and Statistical Learning courses at Nazarbayev University as well as TA and tutorship roles in Continuous Optimization, Integer Programming and Graph Theory in the Mathematical Institute, Oxford.

To improve his teaching skills, he took part in the Developing Learning and Teaching workshop certified by Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) at Oxford and “Teaching in an Active Learning Classroom” workshop at Nazarbayev University. The latter workshop incentivized Adilet to teach his Graph Theory course, Spring 2022, using active learning strategies.