[Colloquium] Colloquium at TTIC: Maria Florina (Nina) Balcan, Georgia Institute of Technology

[Dawn Ellis]

When:     Tuesday, January 28th at 11am

Where:    TTIC, 6045 S Kenwood Avenue, 5th Floor, Room #526

Who:       Maria Florina (Nina) Balcan, Georgia Institute of Technology


Title:  Foundations For Learning in the Age of Big Data

Abstract:

With the variety of applications of machine learning across science,
engineering, and computing in the age of Big Data, re-examining the
underlying foundations of the field has become imperative. In this talk, I
will describe new models and algorithms for important emerging paradigms,
specifically, interactive learning and distributed learning.

For active learning, where the algorithm itself can ask for labels of
carefully chosen examples from a large pool of unannotated data with the
goal of minimizing human labeling effort, I will present results giving
computationally efficient, optimal label complexity algorithms. I will also
discuss learning with more general forms of interaction, as well as
unexpected implications of these results for classic supervised learning
paradigms.

For distributed learning, I will discuss a model that for the first time
addresses the core question of what are the fundamental communication
requirements for achieving accurate learning.  Broadly, we consider a
framework where massive amounts of data is distributed among several
locations, and our goal is to learn a low-error predictor with respect to
the overall distribution of data using as little communication, and as few
rounds of interaction, as possible.  We provide general upper and lower
bounds on the amount of communication needed to learn a given class, as
well as broadly-applicable techniques for achieving communication-efficient
learning.


Bio: Maria Florina Balcan is an assistant professor in the School of
Computer Science at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her main research
interests are machine learning, computational aspects in economics and game
theory, and algorithms. Her honors include the CMU SCS Distinguished
Dissertation Award, an NSF CAREER Award, a Microsoft Faculty Research
Fellowship, and several paper awards at COLT. She is currently a board
member of the International Machine Learning Society and Program Committee
chair for COLT 2014.


Host: Julia Chuzhoy, jchuzhoy at ttic.edu


-- 
*Dawn Ellis*
Administrative Coordinator,
Bookkeeper
773-834-1757
dellis at ttic.edu

TTIC
6045 S. Kenwood Ave.
Chicago, IL. 60637
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