PACM VIRTUAL Colloquium: Andrea Bertozzi, University of California Los Angeles

PACM Colloquium
  • Andrea Bertozzi
  • University of California Los Angeles
  • Graphical Models in Machine Learning, Networks, and Uncertainty Quantification
May 4, 2020
4 pm
via Zoom - https://princeton.zoom.us/j/93299912647 Meeting ID: 932 9991 2647
ABertozzi

Graphical Models in Machine Learning, Networks, and Uncertainty Quantification

This talk reviews semi-supervised and unsupervised graph models for classification using similarity graphs and for community detection in networks. I will review graph-based variational models built on graph cut metrics. The equivalence between the graph mincut problem and total variation minimization on the graph for an assignment function allows one to cast graph-cut variational problems in the language of total variation minimization, thus creating a parallel between low dimensional data science problems in Euclidean space (e.g. image segmentation) and high dimensional clustering. The connection paves the way for new algorithms for data science that have a similar structure to well-known computational methods for nonlinear partial differential equations. This talk focuses on a class of methods build around diffuse interface models (e.g. the Ginzburg-Landau functional and the Allen-Cahn equation) and threshold dynamics, developed by the speaker and collaborators. Semi-supervised learning with a small amount of training data can be carried out in this framework with diverse applications ranging from hyperspectral pixel classification to identifying activity in police body-worn video. It can also be extended to the context of uncertainty quantification with Gaussian noise models. The problem of community detection in networks also has a graph-cut structure and algorithms are presented for the use of threshold dynamics for modularity optimization. With efficient methods, this allows for the use of network modularity for unsupervised machine learning problems with an unknown number of classes.

Andrea Bertozzi is an applied mathematician with expertise in nonlinear partial differential equations and fluid dynamics. She also works in the areas of geometric methods for image processing, crime modeling and analysis, and swarming/cooperative dynamics. Bertozzi completed all her degrees in Mathematics at Princeton. She was an L. E. Dickson Instructor and NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago from 1991-1995. She was the Maria Geoppert-Mayer Distinguished Scholar at Argonne National Laboratory from 1995-6. She was on the faculty at Duke University from 1995-2004 first as Associate Professor of Mathematics and then as Professor of Mathematics and Physics. She has served as the Director of the Center for Nonlinear and Complex Systems while at Duke. Bertozzi moved to UCLA in 2003 as a Professor of Mathematics. Since 2005 she has served as Director of Applied Mathematics, overseeing the graduate and undergraduate research training programs at UCLA. In 2012 she was appointed the Betsy Wood Knapp Chair for Innovation and Creativity. Bertozzi's honors include the Sloan Research Fellowship in 1995, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 1996, and SIAM's Kovalevsky Prize in 2009. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and to the Fellows of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2010. She became a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2013 and a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2016. She won a SIAM outstanding paper prize in 2014 with Arjuna Flenner, for her work on geometric graph-based algorithms for machine learning. Bertozzi is a Thomson-Reuters/Clarivate Analytics `highly cited' Researcher in mathematics for both 2015 and 2016, one of about 100 worldwide in her field. She was awarded a Simons Math + X Investigator Award in 2017, joint with UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). Bertozzi was appointed Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UCLA in 2018, in addition to her primary position in the Mathematics Department. In May 2018 Bertozzi was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences. In July 2019 she was awarded SIAM's Kleinman Prize, which recognizes contributions that bridge the gap between high-level mathematics and engineering problems. The award is based on the quality and impact of the mathematics.

Bertozzi has served on the editorial boards of fourteen journals: SIAM Review, SIAM J. Math. Anal., SIAM's Multiscale Modeling and Simulation, Interfaces and Free Boundaries, Applied Mathematics Research Express (Oxford Press), Applied Mathematics Letters, Mathematical Models and Methods in the Applied Sciences (M3AS), Communications in Mathematical Sciences, Nonlinearity, and Advances in Differential Equations, Journal of Nonlinear Science, Journal of Statistical Physics, Nonlinear Analysis Real World Applications; and the J. of the American Mathematical Society.

She served as Chair of the Science Board of the NSF Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics at Brown University from 2010-2014 and previously on the board of the Banff International Research Station. She served on the Science Advisory Committee of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkeley from 2012-2016.

To date she has graduated 38 PhD students and has mentored over 40 postdoctoral scholars.