2011 VIGRE Travel Recipients
Jeff Regier, July 2011
I attended the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) in Bellevue, WA. On the first day, I attended tutorials about recommendation systems and robotics. During the next 3 days, I went to talks about graphical models, optimization, and latent-variable models. A block of talks about probabilistic models and MCMC was particularly relevant to my current research.
On the final day, I attended a workshop titled "Global challenges and machine learning". It focused on applying machine learning to problems in healthcare and education. I was particularly intrigued by the prospect of applying machine learning to comparative effectiveness research. I left the conference with many new ideas for future research projects, as well as a better sense of what innovations might be important to the machine learning community. I am grateful to VIGRE for funding this trip.
Miles Lopes, June 2011
With the support of VIGRE travel funds, I attended the International Workshop on Sequential Methodologies, and the Conference in Genetics, Probability, and Statistics, both held at Stanford University in June of 2011. In particular, I was offered the chance to give an oral presentation of my work on the topic of high-dimensional hypothesis testing, and receive valuable feedback from other researchers. I was also able to speak at length with a professor from China who is a specialist in my current research area. Lastly, these conferences provided me with an introduction to the field of sequential methodologies, which has important connections to the problems that I have been working on. I gratefully acknowledge VIGRE for making this trip possible.
Yuval Benjamini, May 2011
In May 2011, I attended the Israeli Statistical Association (ISA) 2011 conference in Tel Aviv, Israel. This conference brought together applied and theoretical statisticians from all major institutes in Israel, and focused on integration between theory and applied work. This was a great chance for me to be exposed to contemporary research in many fields in an intimate setting. I gained new insights to my own work, both from preparing my talk and from the discussions during the conference. During the visit to Israel I also visited two research groups in the Weizmann Institute, and presented my work on next-generation sequencing. I hope this will leave to future collaborations. I am grateful to VIGRE for funding this trip.