2025 van Eeden seminar

The Constance van Eeden Speaker for 2025 was 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.
Dr. Doucet visited our department on Friday, April 4th 2025.

van Eeden Seminar: 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

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.

Last updated: March 18, 2026