Every year, the workshop centers around a specific topic and hosts leading researchers who present tutorials in their areas of expertise. The workshop also features academic activities of broad interest and a poster session. Recent keynote speakers are listed below.
- Animashree Anandkumar, The University of California at Irvine
- Anshumali Shrivastava, Rice University
- Rob Fergus, New York University
- John Langford, Microsoft Research
- Robert Kleinberg, Cornell University
- Tim Roughgarden, Stanford University
- Piotr Indyk, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Sanjeev Arora, Princeton University
- Stephen Wright, The University of Wisconsin
- Alex Smola, Google/Carnegie Mellon University
- Ramesh Johari, Stanford University
- Asu Ozdaglar, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Andrea Montanari, Stanford University
- Martin Wainwright, The University of California at Berkeley
- Devavrat Shah, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Suhas Diggavi, The University of California at Los Angeles