log in  |  register  |  feedback?  |  help  |  web accessibility
Logo
PhD Defense: Markets, Elections, and Microbes: Data-driven Algorithms from Theory to Practice
Brian Brubach
Remote
Monday, June 1, 2020, 11:00 am-1:00 pm Calendar
  • You are subscribed to this talk through .
  • You are watching this talk through .
  • You are subscribed to this talk. (unsubscribe, watch)
  • You are watching this talk. (unwatch, subscribe)
  • You are not subscribed to this talk. (watch, subscribe)
Abstract
The data revolution has yielded numerous challenges and opportunities. How can past data inform future online business decisions? How can algorithms use voting data to change the U.S. electoral process for better or worse? How do we scale our algorithms to learn from massive biological datasets? How do we guarantee fairness in a world where algorithms increasingly advise or replace human arbiters?

This talk will explore these questions in application areas such as e-commerce, election law, and bioinformatics. In online marketplaces, data from the past can generate predictions about the types of users that will arrive in the future and their preferences. We can model these predictions with stochastic variants of classical matching problems. Here, the input to our algorithm or result of our decision is subject to some random process. I will describe these online and stochastic matching problems along with my work on them. In the election process, computers have become the ultimate tool for gerrymandering, but they are also on the front lines of combating it. I will survey recent progress on measuring and regulating gerrymandering as well as my current work understanding how these regulations impact voter incentives and what fairness means in this context. Finally, I will summarize additional research in bioinformatics and discuss some future directions.

Examining Committee: 
 
                           Chair:              Dr. Aravind Srinivasan                  
                           Co-Chair:        Dr. Mihai Pop
                           Dean's rep:      Dr.  Lawrence Ausubel  
                          Members:         Dr. John P. Dickerson  
                                                 Dr. David Mount  
Bio

Brian Brubach is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, advised by Aravind Srinivasan and Mihai Pop. His research spans from CS theory to applications and focuses on data-driven algorithms for e-commerce, fairness in automated systems, and bioinformatics. He was a recipient of the 2017 and 2019 Outstanding Graduate Assistant Awards as well as a finalist for the 2019 Graduate Student Distinguished Service Award. He is excited to start a new job as an assistant professor at Wellesley College in fall 2020.

This talk is organized by Tom Hurst