SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES

March 19, 2024

April 28,2011
Graduate Student Research Day
at the Fields Institute (map to Fields)

Organizing Committee:

Ramya Thinniyam, Co-chair
Josh Touyz, Co-chair
Zeynep Baskurt
Avideh Sabeti
Azadeh Tanha
Xufei Li
Keith Knight
Nancy Reid
Research Day Registration on site Apr. 28
Fees: $45, students & PDF $30
Fee includes coffee breaks, lunch, and attendance
to all talks/panel discussion.
Statistics Graduate Student Union
Abstracts Schedule
Participant List

Overview:

Statistics Graduate Student Research Day is an annual student initiative supported by the Department of Statistics, University of Toronto and Statistics Graduate Student Union.
This year's theme is Computationally Intensive Problems in Statistics. The day will explore some of these methods and how statistics coupled with computers facilitates the process of decision making, inference, prediction, and pattern recognition.

Keynote speakers:

Diane Lambert, Google New York
Robert Gentleman, Genentech
Joanna Mills Flemming, Dalhousie University

The panelists will include the three keynote speakers above as well as Robert Tibshirani, Stanford University.

Student Speakers:

Alexander Shestopaloff, Department of Statistics
Chunyi Wang, Department of Statistics
Billy Chang , Biostatistics, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Ilya Sutskever, Department of Computer Science

Schedule:

MORNING AGENDA
8:30 a.m. On-site Registration and Breakfast
9:00 a.m. Welcome Address: (Topics)
Dr. James Stafford (Professor & Statistics Chair), Ramya Thinniyam (PhD Candidate & Co-chair of Research Day), Josh Touyz (MSc. Student & Co-chair of Research Day)
9:15 a.m. KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Joanna Mills Flemming (Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Dalhousie University)
Challenges in Marine Statistical Ecology - From Sea Cucumbers to Grey Seals (audio and slides)
10:20 a.m. Chunyi Wang (PhD Candidate, Department of Statistics, University of Toronto)
Approximating the Likelihood for the Hyper-parameters in Gaussian Process Regression
10:40 a.m. Coffee Break & Poster Presentations
11:00 a.m. KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Robert Gentleman (Senior Director, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Genentech)
Computationally Intensive Biology Problems (audio of talk)
AFTERNOON AGENDA
12:05 p.m. Ilya Sutskever (PhD Candidate, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto)
Generating Text with Recurrent Neural Networks (presentation)
12:25 p.m. Lunch (provided)
1:35 p.m. Alexander Shestopaloff (PhD Candidate, Department of Statistics, University of Toronto)
Markov Chain Monte Carlo with Constellations of Points (presentation)
1:55 p.m. KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Dr. Diane Lambert (Research Scientist, Google)
Statistics at Google Scale
3:00 p.m. Coffee Break & Poster Presentations
3:20 p.m. Billy Chang (PhD Candidate, Department of Public Health Science, University of Toronto)
Regularization for Nonlinear Dimension Reduction by Subspace Constraint (audio and slides)
3:40 p.m. Panel Discussion
Drs. Joanna Mills Flemming, Robert Gentleman, Diane Lambert, and Robert Tibshirani
4:45 p.m. Closing Remarks
Dr. James Stafford (Professor & Statistics Chair), Ramya Thinniyam (PhD Candidate & Co-chair of Research Day), Josh Touyz (MSc. Student & Co-chair of Research Day)


Final List of Participants:

Full Name University/Affiliation
Alzahrani, Alya McMaster University
Asher, Matt University of Toronto
Balon, Jon University of Toronto, Scarborough
Baskurt, Zeynep University of Toronto
Brown, Patrick Cancer Care Ontario
Burkett, Craig University of Toronto
Chang, Billy University of Toronto
Cheung, Chi Ho Brock University
Chong, Yuxiang University of Toronto
Derkach, Andriy University of Toronto
Evans, Mike University of Toronto
Fajardo, Andrei University of Waterloo
Feuerverger, Andrey University of Toronto
Finistauri, Michaelangelo Capital One
Firka, Daniel University of Toronto
Gentleman, Robert Genentech
Gibbs, Alison University of Toronto
Hoang, Uyen University of Toronto
Khoshraftar, Shima University of Toronto
Kim, Jisun University of Toronto
Knight, Keith University of Toronto
Koudstaal, Mark University of Toronto
Krakovna, Victoria University of Toronto
Lambert, Diane Google New York
Lei, Edwin University of Toronto
Lei, Na University of Western Ontario
Li, Lennon University of Toronto
Li, Li University of Toronto
Li, Xufei University of Toronto
Lin, Wei University of Toronto
Liu, Zhong Capital One
Mahdi, Esam University of Western Ontario
McLeod, Ian A. University of Western Ontario
Mills-Flemming, Joanna Dalhousie University
Moshonov, Hadas University of Toronto
Neal, Radford University of Toronto
Nguyen, Paul University of Toronto
Reid, Nancy University of Toronto
Ricci, Jason University of Toronto
Rosenthal, Jeffrey University of Toronto
Sabeti, Avideh University of Toronto
Sheng, Susan Zhe University of Western Ontario
Shestopaloff, Alexander University of Toronto
Shi, Jingchunzi University of Toronto
Shum, Marco University of Western Ontario
Singer, Basil University of Waterloo
Smith, Gerald University of Toronto
Stafford, James University of Toronto
Sutskever, Ilya University of Toronto
Tanha, Azadeh University of Toronto
Thinniyam, Ramya University of Toronto
Tibshirani, Robert Stanford University
Tilahun, Gelila University of Toronto
Touyz, Josh University of Toronto
Waddell, Adrian University of Waterloo
Wang, Chunyi University of Toronto
Wang, Xin University of Toronto
Wen, Yuting University of Waterloo
Wilson, Shane The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research
Wolters, Mark University of Western Ontario
Wong, Andy Kin On McMaster University
Wong, Monica University of Guelph
Wu, Panpan University of Toronto
Xia, Anita University of Toronto
Xu, Lizhen  
Xu, Ximing University of Toronto
Xue, Kaijie University of Toronto
Yang, Kai University of Toronto
Yao, Fang University of Toronto
Yin, Robin University of Toronto
Zaidi, Ali-Kazim University of Toronto
Zhang, Fan University of Toronto
Zhang, Yidan University of Toronto at Scarborough
Zhou, Zhou University of Toronto