Statistics and Biostatistics seminar series | Statistics and Actuarial Science

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

Fall 2023 Seminars

Date	Speaker	Title
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
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 20, 2023 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Bouchra Nasri University of Montreal	On factor copula-based mixed regression models
September 27, 2023 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Emma Zhang Emory University	Tensor Regressions: New Methods, Algorithms and Theory
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
October 6, 2023 Start: 2:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Jiahua Chen University of British Columbia	Global Consistency of Empirical Likelihood
October 18, 2023 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Min-ge Xie Rutgers University	TBA
November 29, 2023 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Aaron Schein University of Chicago	TBA

Past seminars

Date	Speaker	Title
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
September 19, 2019 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Enlu Zhou Georgia Institute of Technology	Simulation Optimization under Input Model Uncertainty
October 3, 2019 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Hulin Wu University of Texas	Real World EHR Big Data: Challenges and Opportunities
October 10, 2019 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Jiguo Cao Simon Fraser University	Estimating Time-Varying Directed Networks
October 15, 2019 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Sebastian Engelke University of Geneva	Graphical Models and Structural Learning for Extremes
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
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
November 14, 2019 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Adam Kashlak University of Alberta	On Khintchine's Inequality for Statistics
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 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
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
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
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
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 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
April 3, 2019 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Chuck Huber Stata Corporation	Causal Inference for Complex Observational Data
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 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 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
May 9, 2019 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Ashkan Ertefaie Rochester University	Robust Q-learning
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
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
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
August 13, 2019 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Dr. Pavel Krupskiy University of Melbourne	Spatial Cauchy processes with local tail dependence
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
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
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
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
July 16, 2020 Start: 5:00 p.m. Location: Online	Nan Zou Macquarie University	Multivariate Extremes: Block-Maxima vs Peak-Over-Threshold
July 23, 2020 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: Online	Kevin (Haosui) Duanmu UC Berkeley	Applications of Nonstandard Analysis to Markov Processes
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
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 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
October 1, 2020 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: Online	Ashley Petersen University of Minnesota	Data-Adaptive Regression Modeling in High Dimensions
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 29, 2020 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: Online	Robin Gong Rutgers University	Towards Good Statistical Inference from Differentially Private Data
November 12, 2020 Start: 3:00 p.m. Location: Online	Tobias Fissler Vienna University	The Efficiency Gap
November 19, 2020 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: Online	Richard Lockhart Simon Fraser University	Conditional inference after model selection
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
March 18, 2021 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: Webex	Hyungsuk Tak Penn State University	Time Delay Cosmography Towards The Hubble Constant
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
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
September 16, 2021 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: Virtual	Michele Peruzzi Duke University	Spatial meshing for general Bayesian multivariate models
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 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
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
October 21, 2021 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: Virtual	Harry Joe University of British Columbia (UBC)	Estimation of copula-based tail quantities
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
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
November 11, 2021 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: Virtual	Jessica Gronsbell University of Toronto (UofT)	Semi-supervised learning with electronic health records
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 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
December 2, 2021 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: Virtual	Eardi Lila University of Washington	Functional random effects modeling of complex brain data
February 24, 2022 Start: 11:00 a.m. Location: Virtual	Helen Ogden University of Southampton	Statistical scalability of approximate likelihood inference
March 3, 2022 Start: 10:00 a.m. Location: Virtual	Aaron Sarvet École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)	Inferential Foundations for Resource-Limited Settings
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 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 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 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
April 7, 2022 Start: 11:00 a.m. Location: Virtual	Eunhye Song Penn State	Selection of the most probable best
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
September 14, 2022 Start: 2:30 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Yanyuan Ma PennState University	Network Functional Varying Coefficient Model
September 29, 2022 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Yang Feng New York University	Transfer Learning under High-dimensional Generalized Linear Models
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
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
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
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 16, 2022 Start: 2:30 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Patrick Brown Centre for Global Health Research	Daily air pollution and mortality
November 30, 2022 Start: 2:30 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Lucia Petito Northwestern University	Considerations when Discussing Causal Concepts with Applied Researchers
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
March 1, 2023 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Linbo Wang University of Toronto	The synthetic instrument
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 15, 2023 Start: 4:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Dehan Kong University of Toronto	Causal Inference on Distribution Functions
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 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 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
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
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
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
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 21, 2023 Start: 3:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Abbas Khalili McGill University	Sparse estimation in heterogeneous varying coefficient regression models
August 11, 2023 Start: 2:00 p.m. Location: M3 3127	Tom Berrett University of Warwick	On robustness and local differential privacy