2026 Faculty and Student Summer Talks
The talks will take place every Monday and Thursday from June 1 to August * at 10:30 AM in Cullimore Hall Room 611.
Date | Day | Speaker, Title, and Abstract | |||
June 1 | M | Ye Su The use of Virtual Control Groups in preclinical studies This work focuses on the use of Virtual Control Groups (VCGs) in preclinical studies. Unlike concurrent control groups, VCGs rely on historical data and therefore face substantial challenges due to study heterogeneity, batch effects, covariate shift, and violations of exchangeability assumptions. The proposed research aims to study and compare existing Bayesian historical borrowing frameworks, including power priors, MAP priors, robust MAP priors, adaptive MAP priors, and EXNEX models. Simulated data will be used to reproduce and evaluate these methods under varying degrees of heterogeneity and prior-data conflict. The long-term goal is to develop a statistical framework that enables dynamic and robust borrowing of historical information for virtual control group construction in preclinical studies, while accounting for partial exchangeability and excessive between-study heterogeneity. | |||
June 4 | R | Name Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
June 8 | M | Ellison O’Grady Data-driven modeling of closed-loop respiratory control In a clinical setting, breathing pathologies are diagnosed and studied via pulmonary function tests (PFTs), with the most ubiquitous of those being spirometry. We examine an existing model of respiration that incorporates essential lung biomechanics, oxygen chemosensation, and metabolism in a closed-loop control circuit. We aim to use spirometry and other clinical data to improve and extend this closed-loop model. In this talk, we will identify the essential characteristics of a spirogram and what these represent in the lungs; then, we will proceed to spirograms produced from clinical data to observe the typical curve; finally, we will discuss the work to bridge the gaps between the expected spirogram and the simulated one, and the benefits of establishing this data-driven link to clinical PFTs. | |||
June 11 | R | Philip Zaleski Convergence of Stochastic Gradient Descent as a Markov Chain Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is an immensely popular algorithm for minimizing functions that arise in machine learning and data science. The iterates of constant step-size SGD form a Markov chain on a general state space. In this talk we obtain convergence theorems for the SGD Markov chain under no convexity assumptions on the objective function. The results of this thesis are split into two parts. Firstly, under a separability assumption on the objective function and a large (order one) step-size bound, an explicit decomposition of the state space into pairwise disjoint absorbing sets and a uniformly transient set is provided. The SGD Markov chain is shown to converge at a geometric rate to a convex combination of the invariant measures, each of which is supported on an absorbing set. The theory is highlighted by one-dimensional examples that demonstrate the failure of the diffusion approximation to characterize the long-time dynamics of SGD. Secondly, assuming that the objective function has only non-degenerate critical points and that the step-size is sufficiently small, an explicit decomposition of the state space into pairwise disjoint topologically recurrent sets and a weakly transient set is provided. On each topologically recurrent set, the SGD Markov chain admits a spectral gap with respect to a Wasserstein-one type metric. The SGD Markov chain is then shown to converge at a geometric rate to an invariant measure in the usual Wasserstein-one metric. The proofs in this setting make use of the weak Harris framework. *** Joseph Canavatchel A boundary integral method to solve quasi-periodic boundary value problems for Laplace's equation We propose a novel boundary integral method to solve quasi-periodic boundary value problems for Laplace's equation. The problem is inspired by a long term goal of developing a boundary integral method to study two-phase fluid flows. Two significant challenges in the development of this method are (i) the presence of a horizontal spatial domain in which the solution is neither decaying nor periodic and (ii) preserving the quasi-periodicity of the solution. Our approach is based on lifting the problem from 2D to a higher spatial dimension (here 3D), in which it is doubly or horizontally periodic. This lifting preserves the quasi-periodicity of the original 2D formulation. Perhaps the greatest difficulty of the lifted 3D problem is computing an integral over the Green's function; it is in fact an integral over all horizontally periodic images of the surface. In a 2D periodic setting, it is possible to sum over all the periodic images in closed form. By contrast we have no such closed form available in our 3D setting. An efficient method for computing this sum, by Ewald summation is described. | |||
June 15 | M | Matthew Illingsworth Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Elizabeth Tootchen Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
June 18 | R | Tareq Aldiwari Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Michael Storm Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
June 22 | M | Andrew White Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Bryan Currie Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
June 25 | R | Joseph D’Addessa Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
June 29 | M | Patrick Grice Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
July 2 | R | Yun Li Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Jack Wang Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
July 6 | M | Justin Maruthanal Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
July 9 | R | Gabriel Masarwa Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Souaad Lazergui Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
July 13 | M | Name Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
July 16 | R | Nan Zhou Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Jung Park Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Hong Xiao Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
July 20 | M | Matthew Cassini Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Luc Brancheau Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Ebru Degdelen Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Heba Yousef Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
July 23 | R | Elizabeth Epstein Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Christopher Agesen Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Amelia Zakroff Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Elif Onat Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
July 27 | M | Tamanna Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Bikash Thakur Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Antonio Madrigal Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Michael Pallante Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
July 30 | R | Weizhao Wang Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Hsin-I Hsieh Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Riya Goyal Title/Abstract forthcoming *** Shumiao Xu Title/Abstract forthcoming | |||
Updated: June 10, 2026