2025
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”
Student Seminar: Hongyi Zhang
2:30–3:00 pm Jones 111
Monday April 28, 2025, at 2:30 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis l Presentation
Hongyi Zhang, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Robust Point-Set Registration via Non-Convex Optimization under Noise”
Student Seminar: Xiang Lu
2:00–2:30 pm Jones 111
Monday April 28, 2025, at 2:00 PM, in Jones 111, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Master’s Thesis l Presentation
Xiang Lu, Department of Statistics, The University of Chicago
“Special orthogonal, special unitary, and symplectic groups as products of Grassmannians”