Nike Sun

Nike Sun is an associate professor in the MIT Mathematics Department. Her research lies at the intersection of probability, statistical physics, combinatorics, and theory of computing. Much of her work concerns phase transitions in random constraint satisfaction problems (CSPs). Sun and coauthors proved the the existence of a satisfiability threshold in the random k-SAT problem, resolving a long-standing open problem.

She received her PhD from Stanford Statistics in 2014. Sun was a Schramm Fellow at Microsoft New England and MIT Mathematics in 2014-2015, and a junior research fellow at the Simons Institute in 2016. She was an assistant professor in the Berkeley Statistics Department from 2016-2018. Sun received the Rollo Davidson Prize in 2017 (shared with Jian Ding) and an NSF CAREER award in 2018.

Program Visits

Summer Cluster: Deep Learning Theory, Summer 2022, Visiting Scientist

Probability, Geometry, and Computation in High Dimensions, Fall 2020, Visiting Scientist

Foundations of Deep Learning, Summer 2019, Visiting Scientist

Counting Complexity and Phase Transitions, Spring 2016, Microsoft Research Fellow