Statistics and Biostatistics seminar series

Seminars listed as To Be Announced (TBA) will be updated as their title and abstracts become available.


Upcoming Seminars

Date Speaker Title

January 28, 2025

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Shai Ben-David
University of Waterloo

Learning probability distributions; what can, what can't be done.

February 11, 2025

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Weijie Su
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

TBA

March 4, 2025

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Lifeng Lin
University of Arizona

TBA

March 11, 2025

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Wenrui Li
University of Connecticut

TBA

March 18, 2025

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Daniel J. McDonald
University of British Columbia

TBA

March 25, 2025

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Keith Levin
University of Wisconsin–Madison

TBA

April 1, 2025

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Samory Kpotufe
Columbia University

TBA

April 8, 2025

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Weijing Tang
Carnegie Mellon University

TBA

Past seminars

Date Speaker Title

December 3, 2024

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Areti Veroniki
University of Toronto/St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto
Network meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy studies

November 26, 2024

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Snigdha Panigrahi
University of Michigan
Selective inference using randomized group lasso estimators

November 19, 2024

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

En-Hui Yang
University of Waterloo (ECE)
Information Theory Inspired Deep Learning

November 12, 2024

Start: 10:30 a.m..

Location: M3 3127

Shirin Golchi
McGill University
Assessment of design operating characteristics in Bayesian clinical trials

October 22, 2024

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Lu Mao
University of Wisconsin–Madison
On the restricted mean time in favor of treatment

October 8, 2024

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Alexander Terenin
Cornell University

Cost-aware Bayesian optimization via the Pandora’s Box Gittins index

October 1, 2024

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Kaizheng Wang
Columbia University

A Stability Principle for Learning under Non-Stationarity

August 8, 2024

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Babak Shahbaba
University of California, Irvine (UCI)
Of rodents and humans: a framework to capture latent representations and dynamics in brain activity data across species

April 22, 2024

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Samuel Cohen
University of Oxford
Calibrating Hawkes processes in financial data

April 9, 2024

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Donglin Zeng
University of Michigan
Learning Optimal Dynamic Treatment Regimes under Risk Constraints

April 2, 2024

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Jinbo Chen
University of Pennsylvania
Novel Missing Data Problems Arising from the Analyses of Electronic Health Record Data

March 26, 2024

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Yang Chen
University of Michigan
Video Imputation and Prediction Methods with Applications in Space Weather

March 19, 2024

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Yanbo Tang
Imperial College London
Randomly weighted composite likelihoods

March 13, 2024

Start: 10:00 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Jonathan Huggins
Boston University
Reproducible Statistical Inference

November 29, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Aaron Schein
University of Chicago
Models of Complex Dependence Structure in Sparse Dyadic Event Data of International Relations

November 15, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Wei Xie
Northeastern University
Multi-scale Bioprocess Hybrid Modeling, Mechanism Learning, and Optimization

November 8, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Ping Yan
Public Health Agency of Canada
A proportional incidence rate model for aggregated data to study vaccine effectiveness against COVID-19  hospital and ICU admissions

October 18, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Min-ge Xie
Rutgers University
Repro Samples Method for Irregular Inference Problems and for Unraveling Machine Learning Blackboxes

October 6, 2023

Start: 2:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Jiahua Chen
University of British Columbia
Global Consistency of Empirical Likelihood

October 4, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Jemila Hamid
University of Ottawa
Multivariate Bilinear Models Useful for Analysis of Longitudinal and Clustered Longitudinal Data

September 27, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Emma Zhang
Emory University
Tensor Regressions: New Methods, Algorithms and Theory

September 20, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Bouchra Nasri
University of Montreal
On factor copula-based mixed regression models

September 13, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Hengrui Cai
University of California, Irvine
Towards Causal Revolution: On Learning Heterogeneity and Non-Spuriousness in Causal Graphs

September 6, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Jiming Jiang
University of California, Davis

A Random-effects Approach to Regression Involving Many Categorical Predictors and Their Interactions

August 11, 2023

Start: 2:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Tom Berrett
University of Warwick
On robustness and local differential privacy

June 21, 2023

Start: 3:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Abbas Khalili
McGill University
Sparse estimation in heterogeneous varying coefficient regression models

June 12, 2023

Start: 3:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Elena Tuzhilina
University of Toronto

Statistical curve models for inferring 3D chromatin architecture

June 1, 2023

Start: 3:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Qingrun Zhang
Calgary University

Stabilized Core gene and Pathway Election uncovers pan-cancer shared pathways and a cancer-specific driver

April 26, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Ehsan Karim
University of British Columbia

Rethinking Residual Confounding Bias Reduction: Why Vanilla hdPS Alone is No Longer Enough in the Era of Machine Learning

April 12, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Shu Yang
North Carolina State University

Empower RCT analysis with integrated information from RWD

March 29, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Ashok Chaurasia
University of Waterloo

Model-modified BIC as a competitor of BIC variants for model selection in regression and order selection in time series

March 22, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Robert Basset
Naval Postgraduate School

One-Step Estimation with Quasi-Newton and Scaled Proximal Methods

March 20, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Alison Burnham
Chief Digitization Officer, RepairSmith Inc.
Member, Statistics Chair’s Council, Department of Statistics, UCLA

Using Data Science to Optimize Business – Opportunities & Challenges

March 15, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Dehan Kong
University of Toronto

Causal Inference on Distribution Functions

March 8, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Xin Bing
University of Toronto

Optimal Discriminant Analysis in High-Dimensional Latent Factor Models

March 1, 2023

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Linbo Wang
University of Toronto

The synthetic instrument

December 7, 2022

Start: 2:30 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Stephen Walter
McMaster University

Some potential biases in the meta-analysis of clinical trials data

November 30, 2022

Start: 2:30 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Lucia Petito
Northwestern University

Considerations when Discussing Causal Concepts with Applied Researchers

November 16, 2022

Start: 2:30 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Patrick Brown
Centre for Global Health Research

Daily air pollution and mortality

November 9, 2022

Start: 2:30 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Justin Slater
University of Toronto

Quantifying the risk of travelling during a pandemic using cellphone-derived mobility data

November 2, 2022

Start: 2:30 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Alexandra Schmidt
McGill University

Zero-state coupled Markov switching count models for spatio-temporal infectious disease spread

October 26, 2022

Start: 2:30 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Mireille Schnitzer
University of Montreal

Outcome-adaptive LASSO for confounder selection with time-varying treatments

October 5, 2022

Start: 2:30 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Liangliang Wang
Simon Fraser University

Annealed sequential Monte Carlo method with non-standard applications

September 29, 2022

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Yang Feng
New York University

Transfer Learning under High-dimensional Generalized Linear Models

September 14, 2022

Start: 2:30 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Yanyuan Ma
PennState University

Network Functional Varying Coefficient Model

April 21, 2022

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Issa Dahabreh
Harvard University

Causally interpretable meta-analysis: transporting inferences from multiple randomized trials to a target population

April 7, 2022

Start: 11:00 a.m.

Location: Virtual

Eunhye Song
Penn State

Selection of the most probable best

March 31, 2022

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Lucas Mentch
University of Pittsburgh

Random Forests: Why They Work and Why That's a Problem

March 24, 2022

Start: 11:00 a.m.

Location: Virtual

Mats Stensrud
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

On optimal decision rules assisted by algorithms and human intuition

March 17, 2022

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Julia Wrobel
University of Colorado

Registration for wearable device data with application to circadian rhythm chronotype discovery

March 10, 2022

Start: 9:00 a.m.

Location: Virtual

Gavin Simpson
Aarhus Univerisity

Estimating trends in messy time series using generalized additive models

March 3, 2022

Start: 10:00 a.m.

Location: Virtual

Aaron Sarvet
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

Inferential Foundations for Resource-Limited Settings

February 24, 2022

Start: 11:00 a.m.

Location: Virtual

Helen Ogden
University of Southampton

Statistical scalability of approximate likelihood inference

December 2, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Eardi Lila
University of Washington

Functional random effects modeling of complex brain data

November 25, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Emanuele Giorgi
Lancaster Medical

A model-based geostatistical framework for analysing malaria school survey data with missing residence locations

November 18, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Guo (Hugo) Yu
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Reluctant interaction modeling in generalized linear models

November 11, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Jessica Gronsbell
University of Toronto (UofT)

Semi-supervised learning with electronic health records

November 10, 2021

Start: 12:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Pragya Sur
Harvard University

Precise high-dimensional asymptotics for AdaBoost via max-margins & min-norm interpolants

October 28, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Pingshou Zhong
University of Illinois Chicago (UIC)

Unified Tests for Nonparametric Functions in RKHS with Kernel Selection and Regularization

October 21, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Harry Joe
University of British Columbia (UBC)

Estimation of copula-based tail quantities

October 7, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Simon Mak
Duke University

A graphical Gaussian process model for multi-fidelity emulation of expensive computer codes

September 30, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Shu Yang
North Carolina State University (NCSU)

Continuous-time causal models with irregularly spaced longitudinal observations

September 23, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Haoda Fu
Eli Lilly and Company

Our Recent Development on Cost Constraint Machine Learning Models

September 16, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Virtual

Michele Peruzzi
Duke University

Spatial meshing for general Bayesian multivariate models

July 15, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Webex

Ashok Chaurasia
University of Waterloo

Combining rules for F- and Beta-statistics from multiply-imputed data

April 1, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Webex

Jean Feng
University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

Safe approval policies for continual learning systems in healthcare

March 18, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Webex

Hyungsuk Tak
Penn State University

Time Delay Cosmography Towards The Hubble Constant

March 11, 2021

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Webex

Alex Franks
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Copula-based Sensitivity Analysis for Multi-Treatment Causal Inference with Unobserved Confounding

November 19, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Richard Lockhart
Simon Fraser University

Conditional inference after model selection

November 12, 2020

Start: 3:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Tobias Fissler 

Vienna University

The Efficiency Gap

October 29, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Robin Gong
Rutgers University

Towards Good Statistical Inference from Differentially Private Data

October 8, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Arman Sabbaghi
Purdue University

Predictive Comparisons for Screening and Interpreting Inputs in Machine Learning

October 1, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Ashley Petersen
University of Minnesota

September 24, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Yehua Li
University of California

Unified Principal Component Analysis for Sparse and Dense Functional Data under Spatial Dependency

September 17, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Neil Spencer
Carnegie Mellon University

A new framework for modeling sparse networks that makes sense (and can actually be fit!)

September 10, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Emma (Jingfei) Zhang
Miami University

Network Response Regression for Modeling Population of Networks with Covariates

July 23, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Kevin (Haosui) Duanmu

UC Berkeley 

Applications of Nonstandard Analysis to Markov Processes

July 16, 2020

Start: 5:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Nan Zou

Macquarie University

Multivariate Extremes: Block-Maxima vs Peak-Over-Threshold

June 25, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Guillaume Saint-Jacques

Linkedin

Fairness through Experimentation: Inequality in A/B testing as an approach to responsible design

June 4, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Grace Yi

University of Western Ontario

Can the reported COVID-19 data tell us the truth? Scrutinizing the data from the measurement error models perspective

May 7, 2020

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: Online

Pang Du

Virginia Tech.

Two-sample test on funscalar data with application to hemodialysis monitoring by Raman spectroscopy

August 22, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Dr. Yan Yuan

School of Public Health, University of Alberta

Development and Application of A Measure of Prediction Accuracy for Binary and Censored Time to Event Data

August 13, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Dr. Pavel Krupskiy

University of Melbourne

Spatial Cauchy processes with local tail dependence

July 11, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

J. N. K. Rao

Carleton University

On making valid inferences by combining data from multiple sources: An appraisal

June 24, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Dr. Marine Carrasco

University of Montreal

A regularization approach to the dynamic panel data model estimation

May 31, 2019

Start: 10:30 a.m.

Location: M3 3127

Dr. Jonathan Yu-Meng Li

University of Ottawa

Worst-case risk measures and distributionally robust optimization

May 9, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Ashkan Ertefaie

Rochester University

Robust Q-learning

April 18, 2019

Start: 2:30 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Shelley B. Bull

Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and University of Toronto

Regional-level genetic association testing under genomic partitioning adapted to local linkage disequilibrium

April 9, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Marcel Nutz

Columbia University

Convergence to the Mean Field Game Limit: A Case Study

April 4, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Pamela Shaw

University of Pennsylvania

Estimation methods to address correlated errors in time-to-event outcomes and exposures

April 3, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Chuck Huber

Stata Corporation

Causal Inference for Complex Observational Data

March 28, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Yimin Xiao

Michigan State University

Excursion Probabilities and Geometric Properties of Multivariate Gaussian Random Fields

March 14, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Yi Yang

McGill University

A Unified Approach to Sparse Tweedie Modeling of Multi-Source Insurance Claim Data

March 7, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Yong Chen

University of Pennsylvania 

Non-standard problems in statistical inference:Bartlett identity, boundary, identifiability issues

February 14, 2019

Start: 1:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Louise Ryan

University of Technology Sydney

Joseph Jacobson

Wayne State University

Sandra Jacobson

Wayne State University

Tugba Akkaya Hocagil

University of Waterloo

Propensity scores and missing data, with application to research on effects of prenatal alcohol exposure 

December 5, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Jeroen de Mast

University of Waterloo

Having impact with data science in industry … Data science as an integrated set of skills in data analytics, data engineering and data entrepreneurship

November 28, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Shihao Yang  

Georgia Institute of Technology

Bayesian inference of dynamic systems via constrained Gaussian processes

November 21, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Linglong Kong

University of Alberta

A General Framework for Quantile Estimation with Incomplete Data

November 14, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Adam Kashlak 

University of Alberta

On Khintchine's Inequality for Statistics

November 7, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Yang Ning              

Cornell University

Nonregular and Minimax Estimation of Individualized Thresholds in High Dimension with Binary Responses

October 31, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Qi Long                 

University of Pennsylvania

Variable selection for structured high-dimensional data using known and novel graph information

October 15, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Sebastian Engelke

University of Geneva

Graphical Models and Structural Learning for Extremes

October 10, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Jiguo Cao

Simon Fraser University           

Estimating Time-Varying Directed Networks

October 3, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Hulin Wu                 

University of Texas

Real World EHR Big Data: Challenges and Opportunities 

September 19, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Enlu Zhou               

Georgia Institute of Technology

Simulation Optimization under Input Model Uncertainty

September 12, 2019

Start: 4:00 p.m.

Location: M3 3127

Rodney Sparapani    

Medical College of Wisconsin    

Nonparametric failure time with Bayesian Additive Regression Trees