Learning Club

Location:Engineering building (1103), room 329Title:Beyond SGD: Efficient Learning with Non i.i.d. DataAbstract:The tremendous success of the Machine Learning paradigm heavily relies on the development of powerful optimization methods. The canonical algorithm for training learning models is SGD (Stochastic Gradient Descent), yet this method has several limitations. In particular, it relies on the assumption that data-points ... Read more

Location:Engineering building (1103), room 329Title:Improving Graph Neural Networks with Learnable Propagation OperatorsAbstract:Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are limited in their propagation operators. In many cases, these operators often contain non-negative elements only and are shared across channels, limiting the expressiveness of GNNs. Moreover, some GNNs suffer from over-smoothing, limiting their depth. On the other hand, Convolutional ... Read more

Zoom link: https://biu-ac-il.zoom.us/j/4685913265 Title:Betting as a mechanism to make reliable discoveries Abstract:This talk introduces a new statistical testing framework that allows researchers to analyze an incoming i.i.d. data stream with any arbitrary dependency structure, and safely conclude whether a feature is conditionally associated with the response under study. We allow the processing of data points online, as soon ... Read more

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UNFORTUNATELY THIS SESSION IS CANCELED We are Back with BIU AI & ML Learning Club ! On May 5,  Hadar Averbuch-Elor from TAU will give a talk titled : Marrying Vision and Language: A Mutually Beneficial Relationship? Abstract: Foundation models that connect vision and language have recently shown great promise for a wide array of ... Read more

On May 12,  Louis Shekhtman from BIU will give a talk titled: Leveraging Big Data and Network Science to understand Philanthropy Abstract: While philanthropic support has increased in the past decade, there is limited quantitative knowledge about the patterns that characterize it and the mechanisms that drive its distribution. Here, we collected over 3 million ... Read more

On May 19,  Guy Bar-Shalom from the Technion will give a talk titled: Subgraphormer: Unifying Subgraph GNNs and Graph Transformers via Graph Products Abstract: In the realm of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), two exciting research directions have recently emerged: Subgraph GNNs and Graph Transformers. We propose an architecture that integrates both approaches, dubbed Subgraphormer, which ... Read more

On May 26,  Dr. Or Litany from the Technion will give a talk titled: Real-to-Sim: Towards interpretable and controllable digital twins Abstract: Do we live in a simulation? Perhaps we should consider the possibility. Replicating real-world observations into a digital twin offers numerous potential benefits. For instance, in autonomous navigation, one could recreate safety-critical scenarios ... Read more

On May 26,  Dr. Kfir Levy from the Technion will give a talk titled: Do Stochastic, Feel Noiseless: Stable Optimization via a Double Momentum Mechanism Abstract: The tremendous success of the Machine Learning paradigm heavily relies on the development of powerful optimization methods, and the canonical algorithm for training learning models is SGD (Stochastic Gradient ... Read more

On June 9,  Dr. Wasim Huleihel from the Tel Aviv university will give a talk titled: Testing for Dependency of Databases Abstract: In this talk, we investigate the problem of detecting the dependency between two random databases represented as matrices. This is formalized as a hypothesis testing problem, where under the null hypothesis, the two ... Read more

On June 16,  Dr. Ronen Talmon from the Technion will give a talk titled: Revealing Latent Hierarchical Structures in High-Dimensional Data Using Hyperbolic Representations Abstract: The tremendous success of the Machine Learning paradigm heavily relies on the development of powerful optimization methods, and the canonical algorithm for training learning models is SGD (Stochastic Gradient Descent). ... Read more

On June 23,  we will have 4 BIU Students giving the following talks on their research progress. First hour (12:00-13:00) will be dedicated for the students talks Second hour (13:00 - 14:00) for networking. 12:00 - 12:15 Presenter: Osnat Drien Lab Head: Prof. Yael Amsterdamer Title: Query-Guided Resolution in Uncertain Databases Abstract: We present a ... Read more

On June 30,  Dr. Nadav Cohen from the Tel Aviv University will give a talk titled: What Makes Data Suitable for Deep Learning? Abstract: Deep learning is delivering unprecedented performance when applied to various data modalities, yet there are data distributions over which it utterly fails. The question of what makes a data distribution suitable ... Read more

On July 7,  Prof. Aryeh Kontorovich from the Tel Aviv University will give a talk titled: Local Glivenko-Cantelli (or: estimating the mean in infinite dimensions) Abstract: If μ is a distribution over the d-dimensional Boolean cube {0,1}ᵈ, our goal is to estimate its mean p∈ᵈ based on n iid draws from μ. Specifically, we consider ... Read more

On July 14,  Dr. Adam Hakim from Microsoft WSSI will give a talk titled: Protecting AI From Theft with 2-Party Security Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) have recently seen widespread adoption, in both academia and industry. As these models grow, they become valuable intellectual property (IP), reflecting enormous investments by their owners. Moreover, the high ... Read more

On November 18,  Dr. Haggai Maron from the Technion will give a talk titled: Exploiting Symmetries for Learning in Deep Weight Spaces Abstract: This talk explores the emerging research direction that studies neural network weights as a novel data modality. We'll discuss recent advances in processing and analyzing raw weight matrices, which exhibit inherent symmetries ... Read more

On November 25,  Dr. Nir Weinberger from the Technion will give a talk titled: Statistical curriculum learning -- An elimination algorithm achieving the weak oracle risk Abstract: Curriculum Learning (CL) is a successful machine learning strategy that improves a learner’s performance by ordering the tasks according to difficulty, similarly to the way humans learn.  However, ... Read more

On December 1 (Note this is Sunday),  Dr. Yehuda Dar from the Ben Gurion University will give a talk titled: Generalization in Overparameterized Machine Learning Abstract: Modern machine learning models are highly overparameterized (i.e., they are very complex with many more parameters than the number of training data examples); yet, these models often generalize extremely ... Read more

On January 13,  Dr. Sagie Benaim from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will give a talk titled: Distilling Foundation Models for 3D Generation and Understanding Abstract: Visual foundation models have revolutionized 2D visual tasks, achieving remarkable success in both discriminative and generative domains by leveraging massive collections of 2D data through self-supervised learning. However, the ... Read more

On January 27,  Dr. Yaniv Romano from the Technion will give a talk titled:  Statistics-Powered ML: Building Trust and Robustness in Black-Box Predictions Abstract: Modern ML models produce valuable predictions across various applications, influencing people’s lives, opportunities, and scientific advancements. However, these systems can fail in unexpected ways, delivering unreliable inferences and perpetuating biases present ... Read more

On February 3,  Prof. Saharon Rosset from the Tel Aviv University will give a talk titled:  Using Random Effects to Account for Correlations in Predictive Modeling Abstract: Correlations are ubiquitous in many domains, and can stem from spatial or temporal structure, repeated measures or otherwise clustered observations. Properly taking the correlations into account and using ... Read more