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Dr. Constance van Eeden seminar

The van Eeden seminar is a yearly event in which graduate students vote for their favorite statisticians. The winner is contacted by the organizing committee and invited to give a talk in the department’s seminar. The speaker spends one or two days on-campus, and graduate students have the opportunity to have lunch and dinner with them.

This year’s speaker

The Constance van Eeden Speaker for 2025 will be Dr. Arnaud Doucet, Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind. Dr. Doucet’s research interests lie in the development and analysis of efficient computational methods for inference and learning, machine learning, signal processing and related areas. He will visit our department on Friday, April 4th 2025.

Seminar Title: From Diffusion Models to Schrödinger Bridges - When Generative Modeling meets Optimal Transport

Event Date: Friday, April 4th, 2025 - 10:30 am to 12:00 pm PT

Invited Speaker: Dr. Arnaud Doucet, Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google DeepMind

Location: Online or ESB 5104/5106 at the University of British Columbia

Event registration: https://forms.gle/gkeoLAr9MwoCvnar6

Zoom registration: https://ubc.zoom.us/meeting/register/Z_eCE0H9QqGknxiuC66eBg

Abstract: Denoising Diffusion models have revolutionized generative modeling. Conceptually, these methods define a transport mechanism from a noise distribution to a data distribution. Recent advancements have extended this framework to define transport maps between arbitrary distributions, significantly expanding the potential for unpaired data translation. However, existing methods often fail to approximate optimal transport maps, which are theoretically known to possess advantageous properties. In this talk, we will show how one can modify current methodologies to compute Schrödinger bridges—an entropy-regularized variant of dynamic optimal transport. We will demonstrate this methodology on a variety of unpaired data translation tasks.

More Information: Dr. Arnaud Doucet has been invited to be this year’s van Eeden speaker by the graduate students in the Department of Statistics at the University of British Columbia. A van Eeden speaker is a prominent statistician who is chosen each year to give a lecture, supported by the UBC Constance van Eeden Fund. The 2024 seminar is additionally sponsored by the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI), the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), and the Walter H. Gage Memorial Fund.

About

The van Eeden seminar is supported by the Constance van Eeden fund, which was established by Dr. van Eeden (1927–2021) in 1998. Dr. van Eeden was a mathematical statistician who made foundational contributions to estimation in restricted parameter spaces and nonparametric statistics.

The van Eeden fund is used to support many other activities on top of the student-invited speaker talk, such as inviting visiting professors for a week or more; organizing statistics summer schools; and giving out admissions awards to promising graduate students.

See the department’s webpage to learn more!

Sponsors

The 2024 van Eeden seminar is additionally sponsored by the Canadian Statistical Sciences Institute (CANSSI), the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences (PIMS), and the Walter H. Gage Memorial Fund.

Previous presenters

Last updated: March 4, 2025