UMD Center for Machine Learning Launches Seminar Series

The University of Maryland Center for Machine Learning is launching a weekly seminar series starting Monday, Sept. 9.

The seminars are intended to bring together faculty, students and others from across the UMD campus and beyond who are interested in the latest discoveries related to machine learning and data science.

“We’re excited about kicking off this series,” says Soheil Feizi, an assistant professor of computer science and member of the machine learning center. “We’re hoping it helps us achieve one of our objectives—facilitating collaborations in machine learning-related areas across the campus and with other universities and research institutions.”

Candice Schumann, a fourth-year computer science doctoral student advised by assistant professor John Dickerson, is the first speaker in the series. She will discuss her co-authored paper, “Transfer of Machine Learning Fairness across Domains.”

The paper asks that if models are used in new or unexpected ways, will they make fair predictions? Previously, researchers developed ways to debias a model for a single problem domain. However, this is often not how models are trained and used in practice, Schumann says.

Feizi says the series will continue every Monday during the Fall semester and will include talks from faculty and doctoral students. Plans call for two distinguished lectures from machine learning experts from off-campus, as well as several lectures by outstanding Rising Stars in Machine Learning, a new program intended to support women researchers involved in machine learning as they pursue new scientific discoveries and academic opportunities.

The UMD Center for Machine Learning was established last April as a multidisciplinary effort to bring together numerous efforts on campus related to machine learning. It is one of seven major centers in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.

WHAT: Machine Learning Seminar Series

WHEN: Monday, Sept. 9, from 11 a.m. to noon

WHERE: Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering, Room 4105