2025
Student Seminar: Mingkun Che
11:30 am–12:00 pm Jones 111
Friday, May 2, 2025, at 11:30 AM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis l Presentation
Mingkun Che, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Randomization inference for quantiles of individual treatment effects under interference”
Student Seminar: Jay Lee
11:00–11:30 am Jones 111
Friday, May 2, 2025, at 11:00 AM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis l Presentation
Jay Lee, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Discretization Schemes of Total Variation for Image Inpainting and Denoising”
Bahadur Memorial Lectures: John Lafferty (Day 2)
3:30–4:30 pm JCL 390
Title: Abstraction in Artificial and Natural Intelligence: Part II: Models, Mechanisms, and Experiments
Abstract: Reasoning in terms of relations, analogies, and abstraction is a hallmark of human intelligence. How can abstract symbols emerge from distributed, neural representations? One general approach uses an inductive bias for learning called the “relational bottleneck” that is motivated from principles of cognitive neuroscience. We present a framework that builds this inductive bias into machine learning models that transform distributed symbols to implement a form of abstraction. Computational experiments are presented on a broad range of problems. Biologically plausible mechanisms for these models are proposed to shed light on how abstraction may be implemented in the human brain.
Student Seminars: Yating Liu
10:00–11:00 am Jones 111
Thursday, May 1, 2025, at 10:00 AM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
PhD Dissertation Proposal Presentation
Yating Liu, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“High-Dimensional Inference Through Latent Structure”
Student Seminar: Aditya Raman
3:30–4:00 pm Jones 111
Wednesday, April 30, 2025, at 3:30 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis l Presentation
Aditya Raman, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Estimation of Approximately Sparse Covariance Operators for Multivariate Gaussian Processes”
Student Seminar: Lorenzo Rangone
3:00–4:00 pm Jones 111
Wednesday, April 30, 2025, at 3:00 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis l Presentation
Lorenzo Rangone, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Combining Machine Learning and Data Assimilation Techniques for Moder Error Correction in Stochastic Dynamical Systems”
Student Seminar: Chin Howe Tsai
1:30–2:00 pm Jones 111
Wednesday April 30, 2025, at 1:30 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis l Presentation
Chin Howe Tsai, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Predicting Aircraft Trajectory with Experimental Flight Data using Recurrent Neural Network”
Student Seminar: Kiran Duggirala
11:00–11:30 am Jones 111
Wednesday April 30, 2025, at 11:00 AM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis l Presentation
Kiran Duggirala, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Factor Augmented Time Series Approaches to Financial Forecasting Using Macroeconomic Data”
Student Seminar: Juntao Mei
10:30–11:00 am Jones 303
Wednesday, April 30, 2025, at 10:30 AM, in Jones 303, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis l Presentation
Juntao Mei, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Backtesting Dependence in VaR: Simulation and Empirical Evidence from Financial Time Series Data”
Student Seminar: Wufang Hong
2:00–2:30 pm Jones 111
Wednesday April 29, 2025, at 2:00 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis l Presentation
Wufang Hong, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Empirical Partially Bayes Two Sample Testing”