Nam Nguyen

4-5pm, Dec 17 2020

https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/94214254415?pwd=K1VoQml4cFdlVW51VW41dWtid2tJdz09



The molecular mechanisms and functions in complex biological systems
currently remain elusive. Recent high-throughput techniques, such as
next-generation sequencing, have generated a wide variety of
multiomics datasets that enable the identification of biological
functions and mechanisms via multiple facets. However, integrating
these large-scale multiomics data and discovering functional insights
are, nevertheless, challenging tasks. To address these challenges,
machine learning has been broadly applied to analyze multiomics. In
particular, multiview learning is more effective than previous
integrative methods for learning data's heterogeneity and revealing
cross-talk patterns. Although it has been applied to various contexts,
such as computer vision and speech recognition, multiview learning has
not yet been widely applied to biological data--specifically,
multiomics data. Therefore, we have developed a framework called
multiview empirical risk minimization (MV-ERM) for unifying multiview
learning methods (Nguyen, et al., PLoS Computational Biology, 2020).
MV-ERM enables potential applications to understand multiomics
including genomics, transcriptomics, and epigenomics, in an aim to
discover the functional and mechanistic interpretations across omics.
Based on MV-ERM, we have developed the following methods:
ManiNetCluster, Varmole and ECMarker.



(1) ManiNetCluster (Nguyen, et al., BMC Genomics, 2019) is a manifold
learning method which simultaneously aligns and clusters gene networks
(e.g., co-expression) to systematically reveal the links of genomic
function between different phenotypes. Specifically, ManiNetCluster
employs manifold alignment to uncover and match local and non-linear
structures among networks, and identifies cross-network functional
links. We demonstrated that ManiNetCluster better aligns the
orthologous genes from their developmental expression profiles across
model organisms than state-of-the-art methods. This indicates the
potential non-linear interactions of evolutionarily conserved genes
across species in development. Furthermore, we applied ManiNetCluster
to time series transcriptome data measured in the green alga
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii to discover the genomic functions linking
various metabolic processes between the light and dark periods of a
diurnally cycling culture;



(2) Varmole (Nguyen, et al., Bioinformatics, 2020) is an interpretable
deep learning method that simultaneously reveals genomic functions and
mechanisms while predicting phenotype from genotype. In particular,
Varmole embeds multi-omic networks into a deep neural network
architecture and prioritizes variants, genes and regulatory linkages
via biological drop-connect without needing prior feature selections.
With an application to schizophonia, we demonstrate that Varmole
provides an effective alternative for recent statistical methods that
associate functional omic data (e.g. gene expression) with genotype
and phenotype and that link variants to individual genes in population
studies such as genome-wide association study;



(3) ECMarker (Jin*, Nguyen*, et al., Bioinformatics, 2020) is an
interpretable and scalable machine learning model that predicts gene
expression biomarkers for disease phenotypes and simultaneously
reveals underlying regulatory mechanisms. Particularly, ECMarker is
built on the integration of semi- and discriminative- restricted
Boltzmann machines, a neural network model for classification allowing
lateral connections at the input gene layer. With application to the
gene expression data of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients,
we found that ECMarker not only achieved a relatively high accuracy
for predicting cancer stages but also identified the biomarker genes
and gene networks implying the regulatory mechanisms in lung cancer
development.



Finally, we propose a novel multiview learning method, Malignomics, to
predict phenotypes from heterogeneous multi-omic features. Malignomics
will first align multi-omic features by deep manifold alignment onto a
common latent space, better predicting nonlinear relationships across
omics. This deep alignment aims to preserve both global consistency
and local smoothness across omics and reveal higher-order nonlinear
interactions (i.e., manifolds) among cross-omic features. Second, it
uses these manifold structures to regularize the classifiers for
predicting phenotypes. This manifold-regularization allows
highlighting cross-omic feature manifolds and prioritizing the
features and interactions for the phenotypes. The prioritized
multi-omic features will further reveal underlying phenotypic
functions and mechanisms and thus enhance the biological
interpretation of Malignomics. We will apply Malignomics to
multi-omics data in neuropsychiatric disorders, and prioritize gene
regulatory networks linking risk variants, regulatory elements, and
genes for the disorders. We will also compare Malignomics with the
state-of-the-arts, and investigate how the manifold regulation will
potentially improve understanding of multi-omics functions and
predicting diseases.
Johannes Hachmann, University of Buffalo Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering presents Making Machine Learning Work in Chemistry

The use of modern machine learning, informatics and data mining approaches is a relatively new development in the chemical and materials domain. These techniques have been exceedingly successful in other application fields, and since there is no fundamental reason why they should not have a similarly transformative impact on chemical and materials research, there is now a concerted effort by the community to introduce data science in this new context. However, adapting techniques from other application domains for the study of chemical and materials systems requires a substantial rethinking and redevelopment of the existing methods.

In this presentation, we will discuss our work on designing advanced, physics-infused neural network architectures, the fusion of unsupervised clustering with supervised regression for local ensemble models, active and transfer learning techniques, bootstrapping approaches to minimize our training data footprint, methods to increase the applicability domain of data-derived models and automated hyperparameter optimization.

Biosketch: Johannes Hachmann is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University at Buffalo (UB), the Director of the Engineering Science in Data Science graduate program, a Core Member of the UB Computational and Data-Enabled Science and Engineering graduate program, and a Faculty Member of the New York State Center of Excellence in Materials Informatics. He earned a Dipl.-Chem. degree (2004) after undergraduate studies at the universities of Jena and Cambridge, M.Sc. (2007) and Ph.D. (2010) degrees in Chemistry from Cornell University, and he conducted postdoctoral research at Harvard University before joining the UB faculty in 2014. The research of the Hachmann Group fuses (first-principles) molecular and materials modeling with virtual high-throughput screening and modern data science (i.e., the use of database technology, machine learning and informatics) to advance a data-driven discovery and rational design paradigm in the chemical and materials disciplines. One of the centerpieces of the group's efforts is the creation of an open, general-purpose software ecosystem for the data-driven design of chemical systems and the exploration of chemical space. This work was recognized with a 2018 NSF CAREER Award.
Abstract: Sea ice is crucial to Earth's climate, Arctic communities, and ecosystems, yet climate change is driving significant losses, threatening polar stability. Quantifying the long-term impacts of a declining sea ice cover requires tools which improve climate-timescale prediction and bring new understanding of climate interactions. In this talk, I discuss how meeting this challenge requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Climate models, while essential, suffer from systematic biases due to missing or inaccurate physics, leading to uncertainty in future projections. I show how data assimilation (DA) offers a statistical framework for integrating satellite observations with climate models to quantify systematic sea ice model errors. Using convolutional neural networks (CNNs), we can learn these errors based on the model's atmospheric, oceanic, and sea ice conditions--what I term a state-dependent representation of the error. This approach enables real-time corrections to subsequent model simulations, which systematically reduces global sea ice biases. I highlight key successes and challenges in developing this hybrid ML+climate modeling framework, including transfer learning to enhance online generalization of ML models, and new methods for integrating Python-based ML frameworks with Fortran climate model code. Finally, I introduce GPSat, a scalable Gaussian process-based tool for reconstructing complete sea ice fields from sparse satellite altimetry data. Together, the DA+ML framework and GPSat offer future opportunities for improving targeted model physics errors for more robust climate simulation.


IACS Seminar Speaker: William Gregory, Princeton University

Location: IACS Seminar Room
Join us as we celebrate this year's Brook & Beyond Challenge finalists.
The Office for Research and Innovation invites you to hear about the two-month journey in which the Brook & Beyond team supported eight cohorts in bringing their bold ideas from the lab to the marketplace. It's an energizing evening that highlights the collaboration, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit driving discovery across the University.
Meet this year's award recipients, hear pitches from the emerging founders, and applaud their achievements.
Connect, celebrate, and be part of the momentum shaping the future of innovation at
Stony Brook University.
Refreshments will be served. Registration is required.
Register Here.

Abstract: This talk shows how machine learning can address challenges in Astrophysics. We specifically focus on black hole simulations and supernova observations. First, we present a super-resolution technique for black hole simulations that avoids the need for high-resolution labels by leveraging the Hamiltonian and momentum constraints from general relativity. This method reduces constraint violations by one to two orders of magnitude. Next, we introduce Maven, a multimodal foundation model for supernova science. Using contrastive learning to align photometric and spectroscopic data, Maven achieves state-of-the-art results in classification and redshift estimation by pre-training on synthetic data and fine-tuning on real observations.

Bio: Thomas Helfer is a computational physicist specializing in deep learning and physics. Currently based at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science at Stony Brook University, Thomas was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins and did his PhD with Eugene Lim at King's College in London. In his work, he looks to bridge topics; in his PhD, he bridged theoretical particle physics and gravitational waves. Now, in his postdoctoral work, he aims to find novel applications of deep learning in astrophysics.

*please note: this seminar will be held in a hybrid format*


Location: IACS Seminar Room OR Join Zoom Meeting
https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/98617630652?pwd=tb4hplPgb3bTTifPCJTCcsn3P9vX8y.1

Meeting ID: 986 1763 0652
Passcode: 882994
Abstract: Astronomers slowly made sense of the cosmos by following the stars night after night. I suggest we examine human identity in a similar way. Let's observe the words individuals use to describe themselves day after day. In this presentation, I will introduce ipseology - a new approach to studying human selves. Ipseology is the systematic, empirical study of ipseity: selfhood, individuality and the elements of identity. The primary idea is that we can learn a lot about people from their self-authored self-descriptions - especially if we follow their revisions over time. I will discuss results from sampling millions of social media bios over more than a decade and present new approaches for observation in the Post-API age.

Bio: Dr. Jason Jeffrey Jones is a computational social scientist whose expertise includes online experiments, social networks, high-throughput text analysis and machine learning. He is interested in humans' perceptions of themselves and the developing role of artificial intelligence in society.

Dr. Jones is the director of CSSERG (pronounced sea surge): the Computational Social Science of Emerging Realities Group. CSSERG is a team of scholars committed to cross-disciplinary collaboration, united by common computational methodologies and always with eyes on the near future. CSSERG has studied the effectiveness of virtual reality in evoking empathy, the dynamics of gender stereotypes in language over decades and temporal trends in personally expressed identity.

This seminar will take place in person and online (zoom link below):

Join Zoom Meeting
https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/93686609778?pwd=KdHVyIbU3ymML6hTchXsm6JLYKLSru.1

Meeting ID: 936 8660 9778
Passcode: 638699

When: Thu: 10/28/2021, 10 am
Where: NCS Room 220, or
Zoom: https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/97978463739?pwd=aVJFVERQa25jYjJrOFZEcWVuSzJLdz09

Deep Surface MeshesPascal FuaEPFLGeometric Deep Learning has recently made striking progress with the advent of Deep Implicit Fields (SDFs). They allow for detailed modeling of watertight surfaces of arbitrary topology while not relying on a 3D Euclidean grid, resulting in a learnable 3D surface parameterization that is not limited in resolution. Unfortunately, they have not yet reached their full potential for applications that require an explicit surface representation in terms of vertices and facets because converting the SDF to such a 3D mesh representation requires a marching-cube algorithm, whose output cannot be easily differentiated with respect to the SDF parameters. In this talk, I will discuss our approach to overcoming this limitation and implementing convolutional neural nets that output complex 3D surface meshes while remaining fully-differentiable and end-to-end trainable. I will also present applications to single view reconstruction, physically-driven Shape optimization, and bio-medical image segmentation.


Bio:
Pascal Fua received an engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, in 1984 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Orsay in 1989. He joined EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in 1996 where he is a Professor in the School of Computer and Communication Science and head of the Computer Vision Lab. Before that, he worked at SRI International and at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis as a Computer Scientist. His research interests include shape modeling and motion recovery from images, analysis of microscopy images, and Augmented Reality. He has (co)authored over 300 publications in refereed journals and conferences. He has received several ERC grants. He is an IEEE Fellow and has been an Associate Editor of IEEE journal Transactions for Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. He often serves as program committee member, area chair, and program chair of major vision conferences and has cofounded three spinoff companies. 

Abstract: Implicit functions have long been a fundamental representation for both 2D and 3D objects in computer graphics, playing a significant role in the field's early development. With the rise of 3D deep learning and the rapid advancement of neural rendering techniques, implicit representations of 3D shapes have regained significant attention in recent years. In this talk, I will present several recent research projects focusing on implicit function-based 3D reconstruction and neural rendering. Furthermore, I will discuss potential future developments in this dynamic and rapidly evolving field.

Biography: Ying He is an Associate Professor at the College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, where he also serves as the Director of the Centre for Augmented and Virtual Reality. His research interests lie in geometric computation and analysis, with applications spanning computer graphics, 3D vision, computer-aided design, multimedia, and wireless sensor networks. Dr. He is an active member of the technical program committees for major conferences on geometric modeling and has served on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Computer Graphics Forum, and Computational Visual Media. He has also taken on key leadership roles as General/Program Co-Chair for several conferences, including Shape Modeling International (SMI) 2022, Solid and Physical Modeling (SPM) 2022 & 2023, Geometric Modeling and Processing (GMP) 2014 & 2021, and Computational Visual Media (CVM) 2020. For more information, please visit https://personal.ntu.edu.sg/yhe/

Location: NCS 115

Fantastic Futures is an international conference series organized by AI4LAM as one of the most important global events at the intersection of AI and cultural heritage, shaping how memory institutions adapt to rapidly evolving technologies while maintaining public trust.

The conference brings together professionals, researchers, technologists, and cultural‑heritage institutions to explore how AI can support organizational workflows, users services and data preservation, access, discovery, as well as innovation in the cultural‑heritage sector:

  • Librarians, archivists, museum professionals and all other GLAM enthusiasts
  • Technologists working on cultural‑heritage applications, AI researchers and developers
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To register, visit AI4LAM's official website.