Modern Techniques of Statistical Optimization for Machine Learning

Abstract

Many problems in machine learning rely on statistics and optimization. To solve these problems, new techniques are needed. I will show some of these new techniques through selected machine learning problems I have recently worked on, such as nonconvex stochastic optimization, distributed training, adversarial attack, and generative models.

Brief Biography

Tong Zhang is a Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.   His research interests are machine learning, big data and their applications. He obtained a BA in Mathematics and Computer Science from Cornell University and a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University.  Before joining HKUST, Tong Zhang was a professor at Rutgers University, and worked previously at IBM, Yahoo as research scientists, Baidu as the Director of Big Data Lab, and Tencent as the founding Director of AI Lab.  Tong Zhang was an ASA fellow and IMS fellow and has served as the chair or area-chair in major machine learning conferences such at NIPS, ICML, and COLT, and has served as associate editors in top machine learning journals such as PAMI, JMLR, and Machine Learning Journal. 

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