Juan Elenter

Bio

> I'm a math and music nerd currently at Spotify as a Research Scientist, working on large-scale recommendation systems and generative sequential modeling. I earned an MA in Statistics from The Wharton School and an MEng in Electrical and Systems Engineering from SEAS at the University of Pennsylvania, before deciding to leave the PhD program to join Spotify.

Before graduate school, I worked on genomic motif discovery through ATAC-seq analysis at Stanford's KundajeLab. I also interned at CERN , contributing to the CMS Open Data initiative alongside Dr. Lassila-Perini.

Originally from the beautiful city of Montevideo, Uruguay, I studied at Universidad de la República. During this time, I played for Uruguay's national Waterpolo team and worked as a software developer at IBM. If any of this sounds interesting, or if you want to share some mate , feel free to reach out.

My work

Broadly, I develop reliable learning systems that scale efficiently with data and compute. At Spotify, I apply these methodologies to large-scale recommendation systems, focusing on sequential generative modeling and integrating LLMs into high-performance recommendation stacks.

Throughout my graduate studies, I adopted a data-centric perspective of ML, focusing on continual model fine-tuning as new, diverse data emerges. This has driven my work in active and continual learning using large pre-trained models. On the theoretical side, my work on duality-based constrained optimization has shown that dual subgradient methods can yield near-optimal and near-feasible solutions, without randomization, despite non-convexity. This allows models to not only excel at their main task, but also meet critical requirements such as robustness and fairness.

I also have a particular interest in problems involving biological signals such as genome sequences, medical images and the gut microbiome.

Projects

ATAC-seq analysis and motif discovery
@ Stanford, KundajeLab

Prediction of complex traits in agriculture.
@ UdelaR, FarielBerry Lab
I find this case very confusing, and have not thoroughly checked the result. R.A.Fisher

CMS Open Data Initiative
@ CERN, CMS

Vitæ

• Spotify 2024-Present

  Research Scientist
  Personalization - Generative Recommendaton
• Simons Foundation 2022

  Summer Intern
  Center for Computational Mathematics
• University of Pennsylvania 2021-2024

  The Wharton School & SEAS
  MA in Statistics
  MEng in Electrical and Systems Engineering
• Stanford University 2021

  Visiting Student at KundajeLab
  ATAC-seq analysis, motif discovery
• CERN 2020

  Intern
  CMS Open Data initiative
• IBM 2019

  Full Stack Developer
  
• Universidad de la República 2016-2021

  Bsc. Electrical Engineering
  Signal Processing