Previous seminars
2018-2019 Season
Dr. Chris Wiggins, PhD, Columbia University, The New York Times
“Data Science at The New York Times” Video
April 15, 2019
Dr. Alex Leow, MD, PhD, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Making Connections: Data Science Approaches to Understanding Mood and Cognition in the Modern Era” Video
April 5, 2019
Dr. Michael Betancourt, PhD, Symplectomorphic, LLC
“Scalable Bayesian Inference with Hamiltonian Monte Carlo” Video
March 22, 2019
Dr. Anima Anandkumar, PhD, California Institute of Technology
“Infusing Structure into Machine Learning Algorithms” Video
March 15, 2019
Dr. Ji Zhu, University of Michigan
“Matrix Completion in Network Analysis” Video
March 1, 2019
Dr. Gil Shamir, Google AI
“Leveraging Information Theory to Practical Machine Learning: minimum Description Length Regularization for Online Learning” Video
February 22, 2019
Dr. Josh Pasek, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, University of Michigan
“What Can Tweets Tell Us About Public Opinion? Uncovering The Data Generating Process By Linking Twitter Data With Surveys” Video
February 2, 2019
Dr. Chris Miller, Professor of Astronomy and Physics, University of Michigan
“Quantify Systematics from Mislabeled Tables in Supervised Learning” Video
January 25, 2019
Dr. Claire Cardie, Professor of Computer Science and Information Science, Cornell University
“Information Extraction from Online Text — From Opinions to Arguments to Persuasion” Video
January 19, 2019
Dr. Justin Grimmer, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University
“How to Make Casual Inferences Using Texts” Video
January 11, 2019
Dr. Adriene Beltz, Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan
“Person Specific Temporal Networks: Accuracy, Dynamics, and Emojis 😕 ” Video
November 30, 2018
Dr. Mark A. Suchard, Professor of Biostatistics, Biomathematics, and Human Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles
“Reliable Evidence from Health Care Data: Lessons from the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) Collaborative” Video
November 16, 2018
Dr. Tamara Broderick, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Automated Scalable Bayesian Inference via Data Summarization” Video
November 9, 2018
Dr. Matias D. Cattaneo, Professor of Economics and Statistics, University of Michigan
“Two-Step Estimation and Inference with Possibly Many Included Covariates” Video
November 2, 2018
Dr. Chris Callison-Burch, Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania
“The Promise of Crowdsourcing for Natural Language Processing and Other Data Sciences” Video
October 26, 2018
Dr. Yang Chen, Assistant Professor of Statistics, University of Michigan
“Determining the Number of States in Hidden Markov Models via Marginal Likelihood” Video
October 12, 2018
Dr. Jonathan Terhorst, Assistant Professor of Statistics, University of Michigan
“New Methods for Detecting Natural Selection in Large Samples of Genetic Data” Video
October 5, 2018
Dr. Kevin Xu, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of Toledo
“Statistical Models for Analyzing Dynamic Social Network Data” Video
September 28, 2018
Dr. Ivo D. Dinov Professor of Health Behavior and Biological Sciences, School of Nursing, University of Michigan
“The Enigmatic Kime: Time Complexity in Data Science” Video
September 21, 2018
2017-2018 Season
Dr. Avi Goldfarb, Ellison Professor of Marketing, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto
“Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence” Video
May 16, 2018
Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention, Professor of Medicine, Health Research and Policy, Biomedical Data Science, and Statistics, co-Director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center, Director of the PhD program in Epidemiology and Clinical Research, Stanford University
“The Power of Bias and What To Do About It” Video
April 18, 2018
Dr. Christ D. Richmond, Associate Professor, School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University
“Parameter Bounds Under Misspecified Models and Some perspectives for Data Science and Learning” Video
April 13, 2018
Dr. Lieven Vandenberghe, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles
“Sparsity and Decomposition in Semidefinite Optimization” Video, Slides
April 6, 2018
Dr. Frank Kargl, Director, Institute for Distributed Systems, University of Ulm, Germany
“Protecting Security and Privacy of Connected & Automated Cars” Video
March 30, 2018
Dr. Jenna Wiens, Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan
“Increasing the Utility of Machine Learning in Critical Care”
March 23, 2018
Dr. Candace Thille, Stanford University
“Technology, the Science of Learning and Transformation in Higher Education” Video
March 16, 2018
Dr. Pascal Van Hentenryck, Professor, Industrial Operations and Engineering, University of Michigan
“Data and Decision Science for Mobility Services“; Video
March 9, 2018
Dr. Ihab F. Ilyas, Professor, Computer Science, University of Waterloo
“Building Scalable Machine Learning Solutions for Data Curation“; Video (U-M affiliates only)
February 16, 2018
Dr. Jeannette M. Wing, Director – Data Science Institute, Columbia University
“Data Science at Columbia University“; Video
February 2, 2018
Dr. Pramod Viswanath, Professor – Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Geometries of Word Embeddings“; Video
January 26, 2018
Dr. Robert Goldstone, Professor – Psychological & Brain Sciences, Indiana University
“Baseball Umpire Calls as a Naturally Occurring Data Source for Revealing Principals of Bias and Learning in Perceptual Judgments“; Video, Slides
January 19, 2018
Dr. Ioana Dumitriu, Professor – Mathematics, University of Washington
“Larger, Faster, Random(ized): Computing in the Era of Big Data“; Video, Slides
January 12, 2018
Dr. Lav Varshney, Assistant Professor – Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“Information-Theoretic Approaches to Neural Network Compression, Clustering and Concept Learning“; Video
January 9, 2018
Dr. Matthew Nokleby, Assistant Professor – Electrical and Computer Engineering, Wayne State University
“Bits Through Sensors: Bounds on Classification and Learning Performance Via Information Content“; Video
December 8, 2017
Dr. Christopher J. Rozell, Associate Professor – Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
“Closing the Loop Between Mind and Machine: Building Algorithms to Interface with Brains at Multiple Scales“; Video
December 1, 2017
Dr. Margaret Hedstrom, Robert M Warner Collegiate Professor of Information, University of Michigan
“Why Data Science Needs Curation and Why Curation Needs Data Science“; Video
November 17, 2017
Dr. Tony Jebara, Associate Professor – Computer Science, Columbia University
“Probabilistic Graphical Models and Online Learning“; Video not available
November 11, 2017
Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman, Authors
“A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age“; Video (begin at 1:09)
September 22, 2017
Dr. Yoram Bresler, Professor – Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
“Sparse Signal Recovery in Bilinear Inverse Problems“; Video
September 22, 2017
2016-2017 Season
Dr. Danai Koutra, Assistant Professor – Computer Science & Engineering, College of Engineering, U-M
“Inferring, Summarizing and Mining Large-scale Graph Data“; Video not available
April 21, 2017
Dr. Michael Cavaretta, Director of Analytics Infrastructure, Ford Motor Company
“Data and Analytics: Emerging Trends and Opportunities at Ford Motor Company“; Video
April 7, 2017
Dr. Tianxi Cai, Professor of Biostatistics, T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University
“Efficient Use of EHR for Biomedical Translational Research“; Video
March 24, 2017
Dr. Laura Balzano, Assistant Professor – Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, U-M
“Finding Low-Rank Structure in Messy Data“; Video, Slides
March 17, 2017
Dr. Robert Nowak, McFarland-Bascom Professor in Engineering, University of Wisconsin
“Learning Human Preferences and Perceptions from Data“; Video, Slides
March 10, 2017
Dr. David Blei, Professor – Statistics and Computer Science & Engineering, Columbia University
“Probabilistic Topical Models and User Behavior“; Video
March 9, 2017
Dr. Jose Perea, Assistant Professor – Mathematics & Computational Mathematics, Science & Engineering, MSU
“The Shape of Data“; Video, Slides
February 24, 2017
Dr. Carol Flannagan, Research Associate Professor, UM Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI), U-M
“From Model T to Waymo: Cars have gotten better—has transportation data science?”; Video, Slides
February 17, 2017
Dr. Yao Xie, Assistant Professor, Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
“Sequential Change-point Detection over Dynamic Networks“; Video
February 3, 2017
Dr. Emily Mower-Provost, Assistant Professor – Computer Science and Engineering, U-M
“Human-centered Computing: Using Speech to Understand Behavior“; Video
January 27, 2017
Dr. Dimitris Papanikolaou, Post Doctoral Researcher, Harvard Graduate School of Design
“The Potential of On-demand Mobility: Lessons From System Analysis and Data Visualization“; Video coming soon.
January 13, 2017
Dr. Lav Varshney, Assistnat Professor – Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“On Data-driven Creativity“; Video, Slides
January 6, 2017
Dr. Bing Liu, Professor – Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Lifelong Machine Learning“; Video, Slides
December 16, 2016
Dr. Tamara Kolda, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff, Sandia National Labs
“An Overview of Tensor Decompositions for Data Analysis, with Emphasis on Computation and Scalability”; Slides
November 9, 2016
Dr. Yuejie Chi, Assistant Professor – Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical Informatics, Ohio State University
“Solving Corrupted Systems of Quadratic Equations, Provably”; Video
November 4, 2016
Dr. Gary King, Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor – Department of Government; Director, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University
“Big Data is Not about the Data!”; Video
October 7, 2016
Dr. Jacob Abernethy, Assistant Professor – Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, U-M
“Statistical and Algorithmic Tools to Aid Recovery in Flint”; Video
September 30, 2016
Dr. Rebecca Willet, Associate Professor – Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Wisconsin
“Estimating High-Dimensional Autoregressive Point Processes”; Video
September 23, 2016
Dr. Geoff Ginsburg, Professor – Medicine, Pathology, Biomedical Engineering; Director – Applied Genomics & Precision Medicine, Duke University
“Novel Genomic Paradigms for Early Detection and Diagnosis of Acute Infectious Disease”; Video
September 9, 2016
2015-2016 Season
Dr. Dragomir Radev, Professor, Information, Computer Science, Engineering, U-M
“Natural Language Processing for Collective Discourse”; Video
April 8, 2016
Dr. Mark Newman, Anatol Rapoport Distinguished University Professor of Physics; Professor in the Center for the Study of Complex Systems, U-M
“Structure and Function in Complex Networks”; Video
April 1, 2016
Dr. Michael Jordan, Distinguished Professor – Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Statistics, University of California at Berkeley
“On Computational Thinking, Inferential Thinking and Data Science”; Video
March 24, 2016
Dr. Christopher Ré, Assistant Professor – Computer Science, Stanford University
“DeepDive: A Dark Data System”; Video
March 11, 2016
Dr. Tim McKay, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor – Physics, Astronomy, Education; Director – Digital Innovation Greenhouse, U-M
“Personalizing Education at Scale”; Slides; Video
February 19, 2016
Dr. Kevin Ward, Professor – Emergency Medicine; Director – Michigan Center for Integrative Research in Critical Care, Fast Forward Medical Innovation, U-M
“Data in Motion Phenotyping: From the Intensive Care Unit to the Home”; Video
February 5, 2016
Dr. Perry Samson, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Atmospheric Science, Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, U-M
“Learning Analytics: Mining Student Behaviors During Class to Predict Exam Scores” ; Video
January 29, 2016
Dr. Goncalo Abecasis, Felix E. Moore Collegiate Professor and Chair, Biostatistics, U-M
“Sequencing 10,000’s of Human Genomes: Early Results, Opportunities and Challenges”; Video
January 22, 2016
Dr. Amit Surana, Sr. Research Scientist, United Technologies Research Center
“Koopman Operator Theoretic Framework for Dynamic Data Analytics”
January 15, 2016
Dr. Susan Murphy, Professor – Statistics, Institute for Social Research, U-M
“Learning Treatment Policies in Mobile Health”
January 8, 2016
Dr. Sandy Pentland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab
“Social Physics: Harnessing Big Data and Machine Learning in Support of Human Goals“; Video
December 11, 2015
Dr. Mesrob I. Ohannessian, University of California, San Diego
“Computation-Statistics Tradeoffs in Unsupervised Learning via Data Summarization”
December 4, 2015
The MIDAS Seminar Series features leading data scientists from around the world and across the U-M campuses addressing a variety of topics germane to the emerging field of data science. These thought leaders are invited from academia, industry and government. Our goal is to provide a forum for interactions on themes related to data science among the faculty, scientists, practitioners and students at and around the University of Michigan.