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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260202T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260202T130000
DTSTAMP:20260426T103848
CREATED:20260122T191932Z
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SUMMARY:Statistics Seminar: Mathematical Foundations for Machine Learning from a Nonlinear Time Series Perspective
DESCRIPTION:Presenter: Jiaqi Li\, William H. Kruskal Instructor\, University of Chicago \nDescription:Modern machine learning (ML) algorithms achieve remarkable empirical success\, yet providing rigorous statistical guarantees remains a major challenge\, particularly in distributional theory and online inference methods. In this talk\, we will introduce a novel framework to provide mathematical foundations for ML by bringing powerful tools in nonlinear time series. First\, we focus on the stochastic gradient descent (SGD) with constant learning rates. By interpreting the SGD sequence as a nonlinear AR(1) process\, we can establish the geometric moment contraction (GMC) for SGD regardless of initializations. By this GMC property\, we can derive refined asymptotic theory of SGD and its averaging variant\, including general moment convergence\, quenched central limit theorems\, quenched invariance principles\, and sharp Berry- Esseen bounds. Then\, we extend this theoretical framework to SGD with dropout regularization\, a widely used but theoretically underexplored technique in deep learning. By establishing GMC under explicit learning-rate and dimensional scaling regimes\, we obtain asymptotic normality and invariance principles for dropout SGD and its averaged version. These results enable online inference\, for which we introduce a fully recursive estimator of the long-run covariance matrix appearing in the limiting distributions. The proposed online confidence intervals with asymptotically correct coverage can be generalized to many other ML algorithms. Overall\, viewing online learning algorithms as nonlinear time series provides a powerful toolkit for deriving statistical guarantees in modern ML\, with implications for high-dimensional stochastic optimization and real-time uncertainty quantification. \nBio:Jiaqi Li is a William H. Kruskal Instructor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Chicago. She obtained her PhD in Statistics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2024. Her research focuses on developing theoretical guarantees and statistical inference methods for machine learning algorithms. She also works on time series data\, especially in the high- dimensional settings with complex temporal and cross-sectional dependency structures. She also\ncollaborates with neuroscientists on applications in fMRI and EEG data. \nHosted by: Statistics Department \nZoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96647674332?pwd=rCHfeGpKslaGS5iIPP5Jh29mQiMJID.1
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/statistics-seminar-mathematical-foundations-for-machine-learning-from-a-nonlinear-time-series-perspective/
LOCATION:https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/96647674332?pwd=rCHfeGpKslaGS5iIPP5Jh29mQiMJID.1
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations,Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/ph.d.-presentation-graphic-option-1-1.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260202T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260202T170000
DTSTAMP:20260426T103848
CREATED:20260128T184233Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260128T184233Z
UID:10009126-1770048000-1770051600@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:AM Seminar: Are Graph Learning Methods Actually Learning?
DESCRIPTION:Presenter: Seshadhri Comandur\, Professor of Computer Science\, UCSC \nDescription: There has been a lot of literature on graph machine learning over the past few years\, and a bewildering array of new methods. This talk is based on a series of results making a provocative argument. Maybe many graph machine learning methods are not really that effective\, and the progress we are seeing is an artifact of experimental design and measurement. I will talk about some results showing that low-dimensional embeddings with dot product similarity (arguably the most common graph ML technique) cannot capture salient aspects of real-world graphs. Follow-up work demonstrates that simple benchmarks seem to outperform fancier methods\, and that there are significant shortcomings in existing accuracy measurement. \nBio: C. Seshadhri (Sesh) is a professor of Computer Science at the University of California\, Santa Cruz and an Amazon scholar. Prior to joining UCSC\, he was a researcher at Sandia National Labs\, Livermore in the Information Security Sciences department\, during 2010-2014. His primary interest is the theoretical study of algorithms\, especially those with a mix of graphs and randomization. By and large\, Sesh works at the boundary of theoretical computer science (TCS) and data mining. His work spans many areas: sublinear algorithms\, graph algorithms\, graph modeling\, scalable computation\, and data mining. In the theory world\, his work has resolved numerous open problems in monotonicity testing and graph property testing. A number of his papers in the interface of TCS and applied algorithms have received paper awards at KDD\, WWW\, ICDM\, SDM\, and WSDM. He received the 2019 SDM/IBM Early Career Award for Excellence in Data Analytics. Sesh got his Ph.D from Princeton University and spent two years as a postdoc in IBM Almaden Labs. \nHosted by: Ashesh Chattopadhyay\, Applied Mathematics Department
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/am-seminar-are-graph-learning-methods-actually-learning/
LOCATION:CA
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations,Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/sesh.jpeg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260204T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260204T130000
DTSTAMP:20260426T103848
CREATED:20260128T170858Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260128T170858Z
UID:10009124-1770206400-1770210000@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Statistics Seminar: Statistical Inference for Multi-Modality Data in the AI Era
DESCRIPTION:Presenter: Qi Xu\, Postdoctoral Researcher\, Department of Statistics & Data Science\, Carnegie Mellon University \nDescription: Multi-modality data are increasingly common across science medicine and technology\, such as imaging\, text\, sensors\, and genomics. These modalities are often high dimensional or unstructured and naturally exhibit blockwise (nonmonotone) missingness where different samples observe different subsets of modalities. Such missingness creates a major obstacle for statistical analyses since classical methods either discard large portions of data or rely on strong modeling assumptions. Recent advances in AI make it possible to generate or predict unobserved modalities from observed ones\, opening new opportunities for data integration. In this talk\, I will focus on statistical inference for blockwise-missing multi-modality data\, while rigorously incorporating modern AI tools. Rooted in semiparametric theory\, there is a long-term open problem that theoretically optimal estimating function under non-monotone missingness is computationally intractable\, even under the missing completely at random mechanism. I introduce a tractable approximation to the optimal estimating equation through a novel Restricted ANOVA hierarchY or RAY decomposition and its almost-eigen-operator property. This leads to a new class of estimators that leverage predictive or generative AI models to borrow information across datasets while remaining unbiased and asymptotically normal. Motivated by the property of the RAY estimator\, we extend the RAY estimator to a class of unbiased\, consistent\, and computationally tractable estimators. The most efficient estimator in this class is then derived\, named as Adaptive RAY estimator\, which optimally integrating all available data and prediction from AI. Simulation studies and a single cell multi-omics application demonstrate that the proposed framework enables stable and efficient inference for complex multi modality data in the AI era. This is a joint work with Lorenzo Testa\, Jing Lei and Kathryn Roeder\, and the paper is available on arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24158 \nBio: Qi Xu is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Statistics & Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests lie broadly in statistics and machine learning\, especially in data integration and AI for statistics\, with their applications in genomics and mobile health. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Statistics at University of California\, Irvine\, and the Master degree from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign\, and the Bachelor degree (with honors) from Tongji University. \nHosted by: Statistics Department \nZoom link: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/91740050783?pwd=joK9hfwvM7FZ48acaiow8OY4ZlBDXA.1
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/statistics-seminar-statistical-inference-for-multi-modality-data-in-the-ai-era/
LOCATION:https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/91740050783?pwd=joK9hfwvM7FZ48acaiow8OY4ZlBDXA.1
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations,Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-28-at-9.08.20-AM.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260209T170000
DTSTAMP:20260426T103848
CREATED:20260114T182449Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260114T182750Z
UID:10008393-1770652800-1770656400@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:AM Seminar: Data Driven Modeling for Scientific Discovery and Digital Twins
DESCRIPTION:Presenter: Dongbin Xiu\, Professor\, Ohio State University \nDescription:We present a data-driven modeling framework for scientific discovery\, termed Flow Map Learning (FML). This framework enables the construction of accurate predictive models for complex systems that are not amenable to traditional modeling approaches. By leveraging data and the expressiveness of deep neural networks (DNNs)\, FML facilitates long-term system modeling and prediction even when governing equations are unavailable. FML is particularly powerful in the context of Digital Twins\, an emerging concept in digital transformation. With sufficient offline learning\, FML enables the construction of simulation models for key quantities of interest (QoIs) in complex Digital Twins\, when direct mathematical modeling of the QoIs is infeasible. During the online execution of a Digital Twin\, the learned FML model can simulate the QoIs without reverting to the computationally intensive Digital Twin simulation model. As a result\, FML serves as an enabling methodology for real-time control and optimization for complex systems. \nBio: Dongbin Xiu received his Ph.D degree from the Division of Applied Mathematics of Brown University in 2004. He joined the Department of Mathematics of Purdue University in 2005 and moved to the University of Utah in 2013. In 2016\, He joined The Ohio State University as Professor of Mathematics and Ohio Eminent Scholar. He received NSF CAREER award in 2007 and was elected to SIAM Fellow in 2023. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Computational Physics and the founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Machine Learning for Modeling and Computing (JMLMC). His current research focuses on developing efficient numerical methods for scientific machine learning\, data driven discovery and digital twins. \nHosted by: Daniele Venturi\, Applied Mathematics
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/am-seminar-data-driven-modeling-for-scientific-discovery-and-digital-twins/
LOCATION:CA
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations,Seminars
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260223T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260223T170000
DTSTAMP:20260426T103848
CREATED:20260114T175234Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260219T193254Z
UID:10008383-1771862400-1771866000@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:AM Seminar: Multiscale Modeling of Cellular Membranes and Oncogenic Proteins
DESCRIPTION:Presenter: Liam Stanton\, Professor\, San Jose State University \nDescription: In this talk\, I will present a multiscale model for cellular membranes\, which is trained on molecular dynamics simulations. The model is constructed within the formalism of dynamic density functional theory and can be extended to include features such as the presence of proteins and membrane deformations. This new framework has enabled simulations that can access length-scales on the order of microns and time-scales on the order of seconds\, all while maintaining near fidelity to the underlying molecular interactions. Such scales are significant for accessing biological processes associated with signaling pathways within cells and experimentally relevant regimes. As applications\, we consider the cellular interactions of two membrane proteins of biological interest: G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and RAS-RAF complexes\, the latter being implicated in roughly 30% of human cancers. \nBio: Dr. Stanton received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern University in 2009. He went on to do a postdoc at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)\, where he later became a staff scientist at the Center for Applied Scientific Computing. In 2018\, he joined the faculty at San Jose State University in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics\, where he is now an associate professor and a recent recipient of the Dean’s Scholar Award in Research Excellence. Dr. Stanton’s current research interests are in the multiscale modeling of non-equilibrium\, many-body systems. In particular\, he focuses on areas such as fusion energy\, biophysical systems and statistical mechanics. \nHosted by: Applied Mathematics
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/am-seminar-multiscale-modeling-of-cellular-membranes-and-oncogenic-proteins/
LOCATION:CA
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations,Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Liam-Stanton-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260223T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260223T170000
DTSTAMP:20260426T103848
CREATED:20260126T202042Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260126T202042Z
UID:10009108-1771862400-1771866000@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Statistics Seminar: Rotated Mean-Field Variational Inference and Iterative Gaussianization
DESCRIPTION:Presenter: Sifan Liu\, Assistant Professor\, Department of Statistical Science\, Duke University \nDescription:Mean-field variational inference (MFVI) approximates a target distribution with a product distribution in the standard coordinate system\, offering a scalable approach to Bayesian inference but often severely underestimating uncertainty due to neglected dependence. We show that MFVI can be greatly improved when performed along carefully chosen principal component axes rather than the standard coordinates. The principal components are obtained from a cross-covariance matrix of the target’s score function and identify orthogonal directions that capture the dominant discrepancies between the target distribution and a Gaussian reference. Performing MFVI in a rotated system defines a rotation followed by a coordinatewise transformation that moves the target closer to Gaussian. Iterating this procedure yields a sequence of transformations that progressively Gaussianize the target. The resulting algorithm provides a computationally efficient construction of normalizing flows\, requiring only MFVI sub-problems and avoiding large-scale optimization. In posterior sampling tasks\, we demonstrate that the proposed method greatly outperforms standard MFVI while achieving accuracy comparable to normalizing flows at a much lower computational cost. \nBio: Sifan Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Statistical Science at Duke University. She was previously a research scientist at the Flatiron Institute and received her Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University. Her research interests include sampling\, generative modeling\, and selective inference. \nHosted by: Statistics Department
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/statistics-seminar-rotated-mean-field-variational-inference-and-iterative-gaussianization/
LOCATION:CA
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations,Seminars
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://events.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/ph.d.-presentation-graphic-option-1-2.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260227T094500
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260227T160000
DTSTAMP:20260426T103848
CREATED:20260126T234626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260225T003412Z
UID:10009117-1772185500-1772208000@events.ucsc.edu
SUMMARY:Semiconductor Career Summit - From Campus to Silicon Valley
DESCRIPTION:A SEMI Professional Development Seminar organized by the SEMI Silicon Valley Chapter – Connecting College Students to the Semiconductor Industry. Learn about career opportunities in high tech and acquire valuable\, practical information that will help you choose career directions and plan for your success. \nCome learn about careers in the semiconductor industry at the SEMI Professional Development Seminar hosted by UC Santa Cruz. \n\nListen to professionals in the industry talk about their roles and find out how to prepare for jobs in the Semiconductors Industry.\nDiscover semiconductor job opportunities you didn’t know existed (internship and entry-level) and how you can prepare for them through job searches\, interviews\, resumes\, and more.\nMeet with professionals and executives during our speed mentoring\, mock interview\, and networking sessions.\n\nAll majors are welcome! Students with a background in Engineering\, Computer Science\, Chemistry\, Physics\, Math\, Data Science\, and Business are strongly encouraged to attend. \n\nEnjoy free food\, free swag\, and giveaways.\nStudents can come and go.\n\nEVENT is FREE but registration is required. Register by Feb 20th to secure a lunch.  \nEvent is organized by SEMI in collaboration with Career Success\, Baskin Engineering and the Innovation & Business Engagement Hub. \nYou Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all\, consistent with state and federal law\, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service\, faculty program\, or community event—is designed to be accessible\, inclusive\, and respectful of all identities. \nTo learn more\, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications. \nQuestions? Send to csuccess@ucsc.edu or visit Career Success at Hahn 125 East Entrance\nNeed accessibility support? Let us know at slugtalent@ucsc.edu at least two weeks prior to the event date.
URL:https://events.ucsc.edu/event/semiconductor-career-summit-from-campus-to-silicon-valley/
LOCATION:Stevenson Event Center\, Stevenson Service Road\, Santa Cruz\, CA\, 95064
CATEGORIES:Exhibits,Lectures & Presentations,Meetings & Conferences,Training
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