CSML Masterclass with Tamara Broderick

From 4-6 June 2018, the Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning (CSML) had the pleasure of hosting an exclusive Masterclass series, with special guest Tamara Broderick.

Over three lunch lectures, Professor Broderick gave a comprehensive overview of her recent research, namely the development and analysis of methods for scalable Bayesian machine learning, to a packed audience of postgraduate students, early-career researchers and academic colleagues from multidisciplinary backgrounds, including Computer Science, Statistics and Neuroscience. When asked about her experience of UCL, she said: "I had a great time lecturing. The audience was wonderfully engaged and brimming with excellent questions and insights."

Professor Broderick’s visit to UCL resumes a series of masterclasses to be coordinated by CSML, through generous sponsorship from Microsoft. UCL CSML pioneers an emerging field that brings together statistics, the recent extensive advances in theoretically well-founded machine learning, and links with a broad range of application areas drawn from across the college, including neuroscience, astrophysics, and biological and complexity sciences. CSML spans three departments across the College, namely Computer Science, Statistical Science, and Neuroscience at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit.

After each masterclass, there was an opportunity to engage in a Q&A with the speaker, and a networking lunch to encourage students across the specialisms to get to know one another and engage in knowledge exchange. One such PhD student described his delight at the academic calibre of the guest speaker: “It was a fantastic opportunity for me, as a new research student at UCL Computer Science, to engage with cutting-edge research in data analysis, statistics and computational methods. Professor Broderick is a leading expert in scalable Bayesian machine learning, and it’s great to see the department doing so much to engage with external voices in the field!”

Tamara Broderick, who is the ITT Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has a similarly diverse background. She is a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the MIT Statistics and Data Science Center, and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS).

Her insightful talks touched upon the following areas of her recent research:

Variational Bayes: Foundations

Covariances, Robustness, and Variational Bayes

Automated Scalable Bayesian Inference via Data Summarisation

You can read Professor Broderick’s full biography here.

Find out more about recent research at CSML here.

Please visit Professor Broderick’s Masterclass webpage for access to presentation slides.