Objective

My research vision can be distilled down to wanting to build theoretical and practical foundations for wide-spread, machine-assisted inference. I am doing so through the following funded projects:

• Composing Machine Learning via Market Mechanisms
  (Discovery Early Career Researcher Award: 2013 – 2017)

• Protocols and Structures for Inference
  (ARC Linkage with CISRA until 2013).

Publications

I have published research in variety of areas including, most recently: learning theory, prediction markets, and boosting. A complete list is available at my publications page.

News

November 16, 2015 – A paper titled Rényi Divergence Minimization based Co-regularized Multiview Clustering that I worked on with Shalmali Joshi, Joydeep Ghosh, and Samni Koyejo has been accepted to the Machine Learning Journal ECML/PKDD 2015 Special Issue.

November 13, 2015 – I gave a high-level overview of machine learning problems and techniques at an Introduction to Machine Learning for Biology workshop at the ANU Research School of Biology.

November 4, 2015 – My student Avraham Ruderman has submitted his PhD dissertation for examination!

Older News →

Teaching

I am developing and lecturing a new first year course, The Craft of Computing (COMP1040) with Stephen Gould in semester 2, 2015. I am also convening a course on Information Theory (COMP2610) which will be delivered by Aditya Menon and Xinhua Zhang in semester 2, 2015.

I previously taught COMP2610 with Edwin Bonilla in 2011 and 2012, and with Aditya in 2013 and 2014. I also co-lectured Advanced Topics in Statistical Machine Learning (COMP8650) in semester 2, 2012. Some course material is available here:

• Information Theory (COMP2610/COMP6261) – ANU, Semester 2, 2014.
• Short course on Information Theory – Tsinghua University, Dec. 2014.

Students

I am currently primary supervisor for three PhD students --- Avi Ruderman, Nicolás Della Penna, and Finn Lattimore --- as well as one Masters student, Guyue Hu.

I also supervise two honours students: Andrew Wrigley (RSCS) and Zac Cranko (co-supervising with Simon Grant at RSE).

I jointly supervised Nam Ho honours project (with Dale Roberts at the Mathematical Sciences Institute) in 2013.

I am very pleased to announce that Mindika Premachandra submitted her PhD in September 2014 which has been reviewed and accepted with minor corrections.

Blog

Since September 2007 I have kept a blog on machine learning and statistical inference called Inductio ex Machina.

Activities

I am currently the Production Editor for the JMLR Workshop & Conference Proceedings. I am also an Action Editor for the JMLR's Machine Learning and Open Source Software track and the Research Chair for the 2015 conference on Predictive APIs.

I was local organiser for ALT 2010 as well as a member of its Program Committee. I have also been on program committees for ICML, NIPS, UAI, ALT, ACML, and various NIPS and ICML workshops. I have reviewed for journals (JMLR, JAIR, PAMI, TCS, Trans. on Info. Theory, Trans. on NNLS, PloS ONE, AMS Mathematical Reviews, Bernoulli, and the IEEE Procs. on Big Data) and conferences (including NIPS, ICML, COLT, UAI, and AAAI).

I have also participated in the Mathematicians in Schools program as a partner with Yass High School.