2021-2022 Statistics Colloquium

SPRING QUARTER 2022

MONDAY, May 23, 2022, at 4:30 PM, via Zoom
GUANGLEI HONG, Department of Comparative Human Development, Committee on Education, University of Chicago
"Post-Treatment Confounding in Causal Mediation Studies: A Cutting-Edge Problem and A Novel Solution via Sensitivity Analysis"

MONDAY, May 16, 2022, at 4:30 PM, in Jones 303, 5747 S. Ellis  Avenue
MARTIN WAINWRIGHT, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, Department of Statistics, University of California, Berkeley
"When is it good to be a pessimist? Off-policy optimization in reinforcement learning"
Video from the talk

TUESDAY, May 10, 2022, at 4:30 PM, via Zoom
MIKHAIL BELKIN, Halicioğlu Data Science Institute, University of California San Diego
"Neural Networks, Wide and Deep Singular Kernels and Bayes Optimality"
Video from the talk

THURSDAY, May 5, 2022, at 4:30 PM, in Kent 120, 1024 E. 58th Street
Reception following the lecture at 5:30 PM, in Eckhart 209, 5734 S. University Avenue
BILLINGSLEY LECTURES ON PROBABILITY
FREDRIK VIKLUND, Department of Mathematics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
"Interface dynamics and conformal maps"

MONDAY, May 2, 2022, at 4:30 PM, via Zoom
ALEXANDER RAKHLIN, Statistics and Data Science Center, IDSS; Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences; Laboratory for Information & Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"On the Statistical Complexity of Interactive Decision-Making"
Video from the talk

MONDAY, April 25, 2022, at 4:30 PM, via Zoom
VITALY FELDMAN, Apple AI Research
"Low-communication Algorithms for Private Federated Data Analysis with Optimal Accuracy Guarantees"
Video from the talk

MONDAY, April 18, 2022, at 4:30 PM, via Zoom
NIHAR B. SHAH, Departments of Machine Learning & Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
"Peer Review, Biases, and Statistics"
Video from the talk

MONDAY, APRIL 11, 2022, at 4:30 PM, via Zoom
GUIDO MONTÚFAR, Departments of Mathematics and Statistics, University of California, Los Angeles
"The Geometry of Memoryless Stochastic Policy Optimization in Infinite-Horizon POMDPs"
Video from the talk

THURSDAY, April 7, 2022, at 3:30 PM, in Jones 303, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
Reception before the seminar in Jones 304.
The Twenty-first Annual Bahadur Memorial Lecture
MICHAEL A. NEWTON, Departments of Statistics and Biostatistics and Medical Informatics (BMI), University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Can clustering improve the performance of large-scale hypothesis testing?  Ideas from an empirical Bayes lab"

MONDAY, April 4, 2022, at 12:30 PM, via Zoom
ISMAEL CASTILLO, Laboratoire de Probabilités, Statistique et Modélisation, Sorbonne Université
"Bayesian Multiple Testing with Spike and Slab Priors"
Video from the talk

WINTER QUARTER 2022

THURSDAY, March 10, 2022, at 4:30 PM, In-Person (John Crerar Library, Room 390), and watch via Live Stream or Zoom
Data Science Institute/Computer Science/Statistics Candidate Seminar
AARON SCHEIN, Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University
"Measurement and Experimentation in Complex Sociopolitical Processes"
Host:  Victor Veitch

MONDAY, March 7, 2022, at 4:30 PM, In-Person (John Crerar Library, Room 390), and watch via Live Stream or Zoom
Data Science Institute/Computer Science/Statistics Joint Seminar
YU-XIANG WANG, Eugene Aas Chair Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara
"Three Challenges in Responsible ML and How to Overcome Them, Provably"

TUESDAY, March 1, 2022, at 4:30 PM, In-Person (John Crerar Library, Room 390), and watch via Live Stream or Zoom
Data Science Institute/Computer Science/Statistics Candidate Seminar
MATTHEW GOLUB, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Stanford University
"Reverse Engineering Computation in the Brain"
Host: Brent Doiron

MONDAY, February 28, 2022, at 4:30 PM, In-Person (John Crerar Library, Room 390), and watch via Live Stream or Zoom
Data Science Institute/Computer Science/Statistics Joint Seminar
MAHDI SOLTANOLKOTABI, Associate Professor, University of Southern California
"Towards Stronger Foundations for AI and its Applications to the Sciences"
Host: Rebecca Willett

THURSDAY, February 24, 2022, at 4:30 PM, Remote Only: Watch via Live Stream or Zoom
Data Science Institute/Computer Science/Statistics Joint Seminar
MADELEINE UDELL, Associate Professor, Cornell University
"Low Rank Approximation for Faster Convex Optimization"
Host: Rebecca Willett

MONDAY, February 14, 2022, at 4:30 PM, In-Person (John Crerar Library, Room 390), and watch via Zoom
YIHONG WU, Department of Statistics and Data Science, Yale University
"Spectral Graph Matching: Theory and Algorithms"
Recording from the talk

MONDAY, February 7, 2022, at 4:30 PM, In-Person (John Crerar Library, Room 390), and watch via Live Stream or Zoom
Data Science Institute/Computer Science/Statistics Candidate Seminar
KRIKAMOL MUANDET, Research Group Leader, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
"Toward Reliable Machine Learning with Kernels"
Host: Victor Veitch

THURSDAY, February 3, 2022, at 3:30 PM, watch via Live Stream and Zoom
Data Science Institute/Computer Science/Statistics Candidate Seminar
LIHUA LEI, Postdoctoral Researcher, Stanford University
"What Can Conformal Inference Offer To Statistics?"
Host: Dan Nicolae

MONDAY, January 31, 2022, at 4:30 PM, In-Person (John Crerar Library, Room 390), and watch via Live Stream or Zoom
Data Science Institute/Computer Science/Statistics Candidate Seminar
NIKOLAOS IGNATIADIS, PhD Candidate, Stanford University
"Nonparametric Empirical Bayes Inference"
Host: Matthew Stephens

MONDAY, January 24, 2022, at 4:30 PM, watch via Live Stream and Zoom 
Data Science Institute/Computer Science/Statistics Candidate Seminar
QI LEI, Associate Research Scholar, Princeton University
"Theoretical Foundations of Pretrained Models"
Host: Rebecca Willett

AUTUMN QUARTER 2021

MONDAY, November 29, 2021, at 4:30 PM, Via Zoom
JASON KLUSOWSKI, Department of Operations Research & Financial Engineering, Princeton University
"Consistency of Decision Trees for High Dimensional Data"
Video from the talk

MONDAY, November 15, 2021, at 4:30 PM, in Jones 303, 5747 S. Ellis Avenue
XIANG ZHOU, Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan
"Statistical Methods for Spatial Transcriptomics"
Video from the talk

MONDAY, November 8, 2021 at 12:30 PM, Via Zoom
AXEL MUNK, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Georg August University Göttingen and Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry
"Nanostatistics"
Video from the talk

MONDAY, November 1, 2021, at 4:30 PM, Via Zoom
AHMED EL ALAOUI, Department of Statistics and Data Science, Cornell University
"Optimization and Sampling from Random Quadratic Potentials"
Video from the talk

MONDAY, October 25, 2021, at 4:30 PM, Via Zoom
LORIN CRAWFORD, Microsoft Research New England; Department of Biostatistics, Brown University
"Statistical Frameworks for Variable Selection with 3D Shapes and High-Resolution Imaging"
Video from the talk

MONDAY, October 18, 2021, at 4:30 PM, Via Zoom
ANDREA MONTANARI, Department of Electrical Engineering,
Department of Statistics, and (by courtesy) Department of Mathematics, 
Stanford University
"Tractability, Generalization and Overparametrization in Linear and Nonlinear Models"
Video from the talk

MONDAY, October 11, 2021, at 4:30 PM, Via Zoom
SANDRINE DUDOIT, Department of Statistics, Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley
"Learning from Data in Single-Cell Transcriptomics"
Video from the talk

MONDAY, October 4, 2021, at 4:30 PM, Via Zoom
RAFAEL IRIZARRY, Departments of Data Science at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Applied Statistics, Harvard University
"Statistical Approaches for Single Cell Technologies"
Video from the talk