COLT 2003 Schedule



Sunday, 24.08.2003



19:00 - 22:00    Reception (Powerscourt)




Monday, 25.08.2003


TARGET AREA: COMPUTATIONAL GAME THEORY (Ballroom)

(Session chair: Michael Kearns)
8:45 Conference Opening
8:50 Tutorial: Learning Topics in Game-Theoretic Decision Making
Michael Littman, Rutgers University
10:10 coffee break
10:40 Invited Talk: A General Class of No-Regret Learning Algorithms and Game-Theoretic Equilibria
Amy Greenwald, Amir Jafari, Brown University
11:20 Preference Elicitation and Query Learning
Avrim Blum, Carnegie Mellon University, Jeffrey Jackson, Duquesne University, Tuomas Sandholm, Martin Zinkevich, Carnegie Mellon University
11:40 Efficient Algorithms for Online Decision Problems
Adam Kalai, Santosh Vempala, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
12:00 lunch break



KERNEL MACHINES I (Ballroom)

(Session chair: Kristin Bennett)
14:00 Positive Definite Rational Kernels
Corinna Cortes, Patrick Haffner, Mehryar Mohri, AT&T Labs - Research
14:20 Bhattacharyya and Expected Likelihood Kernels Tony Jebara, Risi Kondor, Columbia University
14:40 Maximal Margin Classification for Metric Spaces
Matthias Hein, Olivier Bousquet, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
15:00 Maximum Margin Algorithms with Boolean Kernels
Roni Khardon, Tufts University, Rocco Servedio, Columbia University
15:20 coffee break



KERNEL MACHINES II (Ballroom)

(Session chair: Corinna Cortes)
16:00 Knowledge-Based Nonlinear Kernel Classifiers
Glenn Fung, Olvi Mangasarian, Jude Shavlik, University of Wisconsin-Madison
16:20 Fast Kernels for Inexact String Matching
Christina Leslie, Rui Kuang, Columbia University
16:40 On Graph Kernels: Harness Results and Efficient Alternatives
Thomas Gaertner, Fraunhofer AIS, University of Bonn, and University of Bristol, Peter Flach, University of Bristol, Stefan Wrobel, Fraunhofer AIS and University of Bonn
17:00 Kernels and Regularization on Graphs
Alexander J. Smola, Australian National University, Risi Kondor, Columbia University
17:20 Data-Dependent Bounds for Multi-Category Classification Based on Convex Losses
Ilya Desyatnikov, Ron Meir, Technion
17:40 Open Problems Announcement - Yoav Freund
17:45 dinner break



20:00 POSTER SESSION I (Powerscourt)

Poster session for all of Monday's talks
- plus posters of the open problems
- plus all Kernel impromptu posters:

SVM Learning in Distributed Environments
Tsuyoshi Okita, Bernard Manderick, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

- plus the following additional posters:

Comparing clusterings by the Variation of Information
Marina Meila, University of Washington

Multiplicative Updates for Large Margin Classifiers
Fei Sha, Lawrence Saul, Daniel Lee, University of Pennsylvania

Simplified PAC-Bayesian Margin Bounds
David McAllester, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago

Sparse Kernel Partial Least Squares Regression
Michinari Momma, Kristin Bennett, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Sparse Probabilistic Regression by Label Partitioning
Shantanu Chakrabartty, Gert Cauwenberghs, The Johns Hopkins University, Prof Jayadeva, Indian Institute of Technology

Learning with Rigorous Support Vector Machines
Jinbo Bi, Rensselaer Polytechnic Insitute, Vladimir Vapnik, NEC Laboratories America

Robust Regression by Boosting the Median
Balazs Kegl, University of Montreal

Boosting with Diverse Base Classifiers
Sanjoy Dasgupta, University of California at San Diego, Philip Long, Genome Institute of Singapore

Reducing Kernel Matrix Diagonal Dominance using Semi-Definite Programming
Jaz Kandola, Royal Holloway, University of London, Thore Graepel, Microsoft Research, John Shawe-Taylor, Royal Holloway, University of London







Tuesday, 26.08.2003



STATISTICAL LEARNING THEORY (Ballroom)

(Session chair: Gabor Lugosi)
8:45 Optimal Rates of Aggregation
Alexandre Tsybakov, Université Paris 6
9:05 Distance-Based Classification with Lipschitz Functions
Ulrike von Luxburg, Olivier Bousquet, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
9:25 Random Subclass Bounds
Shahar Mendelson, Petra Philips, The Australian National University
9:45 PAC-MDL Bounds
Avrim Blum, Carnegie Mellon University, John Langford, IBM TJ Watson Research Center
10:05 coffee break



ONLINE LEARNING (Ballroom)

(Session chair: Ron Meir)
10:40 Universal Well-Calibrated Algorithm for Online Classification
Vladimir Vovk, Royal Holloway, University of London
11:00 Learning Probabilistic Linear-Threshold Classifiers via Selective Sampling
Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi, Alex Conconi, Università degli Studi di Milano, Claudio Gentile, Università dell'Insubria, Varese, Italy
11:20 Learning Algorithms for Enclosing Points in Bregmanian Spheres
Koby Crammer, Yoram Singer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
11:40 Internal Regret in On-Line Portfolio Selection
Gilles Stoltz, Université Paris-Sud, Gabor Lugosi, University Pompeu Fabra
12:00 lunch break



OTHER APPROACHES (Ballroom)

(Session chair: Alex Smola)
14:00 Lower Bounds on the Sample Complexity of Exploration in the Multi-Armed Bandit Problem
Shie Mannor, John Tsitsiklis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
14:20 Smooth ε-Insensitive Regression by Loss Symmetrization
Ofer Dekel, Shai Shalev-Shwartz, Yoram Singer, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
14:40 On Finding Large Conjunctive Clusters
Nina Mishra, HP Labs, Stanford University, Dana Ron, Tel-Aviv University, Ram Swaminathan, HP Labs
15:00 Learning Arithmetic Circuits via Partial Derivatives
Adam Klivans, Harvard University, Amir Shpilka, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology
15:20 coffee break
16:00 business meeting (Ballroom)
17:00 dinner break



19:30 IMPROMPTU TALKS (Ballroom)

(Session chair: Yoav Freund)



20:00 POSTER SESSION II (Powerscourt)

Poster session for all Tuesday's and Wednesday's talks
- plus the following additional posters:


Using A Linear Fit To Determine Monotonicity Directions
Malik Magdon-Ismail, RPI, Joseph Sill, Plumtree Software

Generalization bounds for voting classifiers based on sparsity and clustering
Vladimir Koltchinskii, The University of New Mexico, Dmitry Panchenko, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Savina Andonova, Boston University

Sequence Prediction based on Monotone Complexity
Marcus Hutter, IDSIA

How Many Strings Are Easy to Predict?
Yuri Kalnishkan, Volodya Vovk, Michael V. Vyugin, Royal Holloway University of London

Polynomial Certificates for Propositional Classes
Marta Arias, Roni Khardon, Tufts University, Rocco A. Servedio, Columbia University

On-line Learning with Imperfect Monitoring
Shie Mannor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nahum Shimkin, Technion

Exploiting Task Relatedness for Multiple Task Learning
Shai Ben-David, Cornell University and Technion, Reba Schuller, Cornell University

Approximate Equivalence of Markov Decision Processes
Eyal Even-Dar, Yishay Mansour, Tel Aviv University

An Information Theoretic Tradeoff between Complexity and Accuracy
Ran Gilad-Bachrach, Amir Navot, Naftali Tishby, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Learning Random log-depth Decision Trees under the Uniform Distribution
Jeffrey Jackson, Duquesne University, Rocco Servedio, Columbia University

Projective DNF Formulae and Their Revision
Robert Sloan, University of Illinois at Chicago, Balazs Szorenyi, University of Szeged, Gyorgy Turan, University of Illinois at Chicago

Learning with Equivalence Constraints, and the Relation to Multiclass Learning
Aharon Bar Hillel, Daphna Weinshall, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem




Wednesday, 27.08.2003


TARGET AREA: NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING (Ballroom)

(Session chair: Rob Schapire)
8:45 Tutorial: Machine Learning Methods in Natural Language Processing
Michael Collins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
10:05 coffee break
10:40 Invited talk: Learning from Uncertain Data
Mehryar Mohri, AT&T Labs -- Research
11:20 Invited talk: Learning and Parsing Stochastic Unification-Based Grammars
Mark Johnson, Brown University
12:00 lunch break



INDUCTIVE INFERENCE LEARNING (Ballroom)

(Session chair: Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi)
14:00 Generality's Price: Inescapable Deficiencies in Machine-Learned Programs
John Case, University of Delaware, Keh-Jiann Chen, Academia Sinica, Sanjay Jain, National University of Singapore, Wolfgang Merkle, Universität Heidelberg, James Royer, Syracuse University
14:20 On Learning To Coordinate: Random Bits Help, Insightful Normal Forms, and Competency Isomorphisms
John Case, University of Delaware, Sanjay Jain, National University of Singapore, Franco Montagna, Giulia Simi, Andrea Sorbi, University of Siena
14:40 Learning All Subfunctions of a Function
Sanjay Jain, National University of Singapore, Efim Kinber, Sacred Heart University, Rolf Wiehagen, University of Kaiserslautern
15:00 Conference ends