Dr Rachel Lawrence
Rachel Lawrence is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, where she works on the mathematical foundations of machine intelligence — how to shape abstraction, reasoning, and generalization in learning systems.
Her work focuses on problems at the intersection of algorithms, dynamical systems, and AI, with the goal of creating technologies that center trust, reliability, and positive human impact.
Dr Lawrence holds a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from Yale College. Past affiliations include Pixar Animation Studios, Reservoir Labs, and Microsoft Research, Redmond.
Select publications
- “Position: Beyond Reasoning Zombies — AI Reasoning Requires Process Validity.” in submission. https://philpapers.org/rec/LAWPBR-3.
- “RE-IMAGINE: Symbolic Benchmark Synthesis for Reasoning Evaluation.” Proceedings of the 42nd International Conference on Machine Learning, 2025, pp. 69331–62. proceedings.mlr.press, https://proceedings.mlr.press/v267/xu25n.html.
- “A Fourier Space Perspective on Diffusion Models.” arXiv:2505.11278, arXiv, 16 May 2025. arXiv.org, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.11278.
- “Simplicial Reaction Networks and Dynamics on Graphs.” http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2023/EECS-2023-265.html. University of California, Berkeley, PhD Thesis.
- “Testing, Training, or Validating Reasoning Models.” US Patent MS# 504387-US01, 31 Mar. 2025.
- “Zero Forcing with Random Sets.” Discrete Mathematics, vol. 347, no. 5, May 2024, p. 113944. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.disc.2024.113944.
- “Configurations of 10 Points and Their Incidence Varieties.” arXiv:2507.09829, arXiv, 13 July 2025. in submission. arXiv.org, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2507.09829.
- “Counting Arcs in Projective Planes via Glynn’s Algorithm.” Journal of Geometry, vol. 108, no. 3, Dec. 2017, pp. 1013–29. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1007/s00022-017-0391-1.
Select awards
- National Physical Sciences Consortium Graduate Fellowship
- Berkeley EECS Outstanding TA Award
- D.E. Shaw Zenith Fellowship
- MOST Fellowship for Mathematics Outreach.
Further links
Personal website: rlaw.me
https://bsky.app/profile/rachel-law.bsky.social
