Venue: Run Run Shaw Business Administrative Building, Yuquan CampusSpeaker: Professor John H. Hubbard, professor at the Department of Mathematics, Cornell UniversityAbstract:As probably many of you know, Facebook is capable of putting names on faces in pictures that you send them. How do they do it? The information is proprietary, but one can listen to whispers from experts.  In this lecture I propose to describe at least part of what Facebook does: an algorithm known as Eigenfaces. The main point I want to make is that Eigenfaces is straightforward linear algebra, having to do with eigenvalues and eigenvectors, orthogonal projections, etc.

Venue: Room 457, Nano Building, Zijingang CampusSpeaker: Howard David Lipshitz is a Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto. His research interests are genetic models of development and disease and functional genomics and proteomics.

Venue: Room 200-9, Run Run Shaw Business Administrative Building, Yuquan CampusSpeaker:Ronghui Xu, Dr./ ProfessorProfessor of Statistics and BiostatisticsDepartment of Family Medicine and Public Health and Department of MathematicsUniversity of California, San DiegoAbstract:Prediction and Inference under Competing Risks in High Dimension - An EHR Demonstration Project for Prostate CancerThe work was motivated by the analysis project using the linked SEER-Medicare database to predict cancer versus non-cancer mortality in men of age 65 years or older who were diagnosed with prostate cancer. We consider existing R package implementations that are computationally feasible for such data sets with up to 100,000 human subjects and over 20,000 claim codes. We carried out simulation studies to compare lasso for cause-specific hazards regression and boosting for Fine-Gray sub-distribution regression models with different approaches to choosing the penalty parameters, with the goal of prediction accuracy of the cumulative incidence rates at 2 and 5 years from baseline. Separately, we also developed methods for constructing confidence intervals of the regression effects of predictors (clinical variables and claim codes) under the Fine-Gray model in high dimensions, using the one-step estimator along the line of van de Geer et al. (2014) and Zhang and Zhang (2014). The extension though, is non-trivial under competing risks and Cox type model formulation. The results of the SEER-Medicare database analysis will be presented.

Venue: Room 250, Mong Man Wai Building, Zijingang CampusSpeaker:Rui Wang is Associate Professor of Energy, Resources and Environment at the the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He received BS,BAand MS from Peking University and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.He specializes in public policy analysis for sustainable development, especially on cities, the environment, and China. He teaches Applied Policy Analysis with Cases in Sustainable Development, Cities: Toward Sustainable Prosperity, and Global Environment Fundamentals. He is the inaugural SAIS China Yeung Family Endowed Scholar and a faculty fellow of the SAIS Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy. He serves on the editorial boards of Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment and the Journal of Transportation and Statistics. He has also consulted for the Beijing Municipal Institute of City Planning and Design, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the World Bank.

Venue: Room 457, Nano Building, Zijingang Campus Speaker: Dinshaw J. Patel, head of the Dinshaw Patel Lab, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

Venue: Room 223, Mong Man Wai Building, Zijingang CampusSpeaker: W. Hugh Woodin, Professor of Philosophy and of Mathematics, Harvard University

Venue: Room 205, Administrative Building, School of MedicineSpeaker: Jeffrey A. Golden, Ramzi S. Cotran Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School and Chair of Department of Pathology, Brigham and Woman's Hospital

Venue: Room 245, College of Life Sciences, Zijingang CampusSpeaker: Mary Williams, Department Member, The Plant Cell, American Society of Plant BiologistsAbstract:In this presentation, I will outline the key steps in writing a paper and preparing figures. Key points include how to frame the significance of the question being addressed and how to put the results in context, as well as how much information to include in the methods. I will also discuss best practices for figure presentation, from cropping and contrast adjustment to layout and design, and provide suggestions for how to present the key findings in the abstract, title, summary figure and cover letter. The second part of the presentation will cover how the manuscript is reviewed, from initial submission to final acceptance, in order to demystify this process and help early-career researchers understand how they can ensure a smooth process. I will describe the author's roles at various stages of the review process, how editors and reviewers are solicited, how a decision is reached, and how authors can respond to reviewer comments.Contact information:mwilliams@aspb.org

Venue: Room 212, Tin Ka-ping Building, Xixi CampusSpeaker: Harm Kuper, Professor at Further Education and Educational Management, Free University of Berlin