Program

The full program book for WiML 2021 is now available.

Invited Speakers

The program will include the following line-up of invited speakers:

Sunita Sarawagi

Professor,

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

Meire Fortunato

Research Scientist,

Deepmind

Adriana R Soriano

Research Scientist,

Facebook AI Research

Adjunct Professor,

McGill University

Bo Li

Assistant Professor,

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Jade Abbott

Machine Learning Lead,

Retro Rabbit

Orevaoghene Ahia

PhD Student,

University of Washington

Perez Ogayo

Master Student,

Carnegie Mellon University

Panel Discussion: Career and Life

The program will include the following line-up of panelists:

Emily Denton

Research Scientist

Google

Devi Parikh

Research Director at Facebook AI Research & Associate Professor at Georgia Tech

Adriana R Soriano

Research Scientist,

Facebook AI Research

Adjunct Professor,

McGill University

Bo Li

Assistant Professor,

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Thursday, December 9, 2021

WiML Workshop 1 (UTC time in 24 hour format)

2:00 – 3:00

Pre-Workshop Informal Social

3:00 – 3:20

Opening Remarks – WiML 2021 organizers

3:20 – 3:30

WiML D&I Chairs Remarks

3:30 – 4:15

Invited talk – Machine Learning as a Service: The Challenges of Serving diverse client Distributions, Sunita Sarawagi

4:15 – 4:40

Contributed talk #1 – Regret minimization in heavy-tailed bandits, Shubhada Agrawal

4:45 – 5:45

Poster Session #1

5:45 – 6:15

Break

6:15 – 7:00

Invited talk – Learning physics models that generalize, Meire Fortunato

Friday, December 10, 2021

WiML Workshop 2 (UTC time in 24 hour format)

2:00 – 3:00

Speed Networking/Social

3:00 – 4:00

Social in Gather Town

4:00 – 5:05

Invited talk – The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Collaborative Research - The Masakhane Story, Jade Abbott, Perez Ogayo, Orevaoghene Ahia

5:05 – 5:30

Contributed talk #2 – Syntax-enhanced Dialogue Summarization, Seolhwa Lee

5:30 – 7:00

Social in Gather Town

WiML Workshop 3 (UTC time in 24 hour format)

10:00 – 11:00

Speed Networking/Social

11:00 – 12:45

Mentorship Roundtables I | Sponsor Expo

12:45 – 13:45

Poster Session #2 | Sponsor Expo

13:45 – 13:50

Break

13:50 – 14:35

Invited talk – Seeing the unseen: Inferring unobserved information from limited sensory data, Adriana Romero-Soriano

14:35 – 15:00

Contributed talk #3 – Causal Meta-learning by Making Informative Interventions about the Functional Form Chentian Jiang

WiML Workshop 4 (UTC time in 24 hour format)

19:00 – 19:45

Invited talk – Trustworthy Machine Learning via Logic Inference, Bo Li

19:45 – 20:10

Contributed talk #4 – A Graph Perspective on Neural Network Dynamics Fatemeh Vahedian

20:10 – 20:15

Break

20:15 – 21:55

Mentorship Roundtables II | Sponsor Expo

21:55 – 22:40

Panel Discussion: Career and Life

22:40 – 23:00

Closing Remarks

Mentorship Roundtables

We have three types of mentorship roundtables: Research roundtables, Career and Life roundtables, and Sponsor roundtables. The mentorship session is at two time slots on Fri Dec 10, 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM and 20:15 PM - 21:55 PM (UTC time in 24-hour format) in the Roundtable Rooms in WiML Gather.Town.


To allow WiML attendees to gain exposure to a wide range of topics, as well as to allow mentors and mentees to connect with a variety of people, attendees (but not mentors) at the mentorship session will rotate between the discussion tables throughout the event. Specifically, there will be 3 timed opportunities to rotate between the Research, Career and Life, and Sponsorship tables. Each discussion period will last for approximately 15 minutes (during which the participants will be asked to remain at their seats for the ongoing conversation). After each 15-minute session, the WiML organizers will announce that it is time for the participants to move to a different roundtable, and all participants will have 10 minutes to explore the different rooms and decide on their discussion topic of interest. All mentors and mentees will be free to use the last 10 minutes of the roundtables session as they wish, either remaining at their discussion tables or moving between tables to meet the other WiML participants.

Mentorship Roundtable I: Friday, December 10: 11:00 - 12:45 (UTC time in 24-hour format)



Table 1 (Research):

Reinforcement learning I (Feryal Behbahani)


Table 2 (Research):

Reinforcement learning II (Minhae Kwon)


Table 3 (Research):

Control and online learning (Katja Hofmann)


Table 4 (Research):

Probabilistic graphical models and Bayesian methods (Isabel Valera)


Table 5 (Research):

Statistical inference and estimation (Emtiyaz Khan)


Table 6 (Research):

Learning theory (Arthur Gretton)


Table 7 (Research):

AutoML (Katharina Eggensperer)


Table 8 (Research):

Computer Vision (Enzo Ferrante)


Table 9 (Research):

Robotics (Daniela Pamplona)


Table 10 (Research):

Fairness, accountability, and ethics in machine learning (Jessica Schrouff)


Table 11 (Research):

Social science applications (Alice Oh)


Table 12 (Career and Life):

Navigating the job search (industry) and doing research in the industry (Lavanya Tekumalla)


Table 13 (Career and Life):

Developing a long-term research plan (Ferenc Huszar)


Table 14 (Career and Life):

Navigating academia (job search and tenure application process) (Razvan Pascanu)


Table 15 (Career and Life):

Choosing between academia and industry (Alessandra Tosi)


Table 16 (Career and Life):

Seeking funding (academia edition): PhD fellowships / professorship grants (Ioana Bica)


Table 17 (Career and Life):

Establishing collaborations (Yarin Gal)


Table 18 (Career and Life):

Work-life balance (academia) (Nando de Freitas)


Table 19 (Career and Life):

Surviving graduate school (Truyen Tran)


Table 20 (Career and Life):

Work-life balance (industry) (Shane Legg)


Table 21 (Career and Life):

Scientific communication (Shakir Mohamed)


Table 22 (Career and Life):

Taking on the leadership roles (academic + industry) (Po-Ling Loh)


Table A (Sponsor):

Entering AI Research from other STEM fields [Deepmind] (Andy Brock, Michela Paganini)


Table B (Sponsor):

Careers at G-Research [G-Research] (Clara Dolfen, Jamie Watson, Olivia Bateman)


Table C (Sponsor):

Machine Learning at Microsoft Research [Microsoft] (Rianne van den Berg)


Table D (Sponsor):

Careers at NVIDIA [NVIDIA] (Monica Spehar)



Mentorship Roundtable II: Friday, December 10: 20:15 - 21:55 PM (UTC time in 24-hour format)



Table 1 (Research):

Deep learning (Ian Goodfellow)


Table 2 (Research):

Reinforcement learning I (Sham Kakade) [Canceled]


Table 3 (Research):

Reinforcement learning II (Amy Zhang)


Table 4 (Research):

Optimization (Tatjana Chavdarova)


Table 5 (Research):

Learning theory (Karan Singh)


Table 6 (Research):

Natural language processing (Layla El Asri)


Table 7 (Research):

Data-efficient machine learning (Nicolas Le Roux)


Table 8 (Research):

Interpretability and explainability in machine learning (Jennifer Wortman Vaughan)


Table 9 (Research):

Causal inference and counterfactuals (Sarah Tan)


Table 10 (Research):

Robotics (Eugene Vinitsky)


Table 11 (Research):

Computer vision (Jennifer Hobbs)


Table 12 (Research):

Music applications (Pablo Samuel Castro)


Table 13 (Research):

Machine learning for healthcare (Adriana Romero-Soriano)


Table 14 (Research):

AI 4 Science (Animashree Anandkumar)


Table 15 (Career and Life):

Navigating the job search (industry) and doing research in industry (Timnit Gebru)


Table 16 (Career and Life):

Finding mentors throughout your career (Yisong Yue)


Table 17 (Career and Life):

Navigating academia (job search and tenure application process) (Sinead Williamson)


Table 18 (Career and Life):

Choosing between academia and industry (Negar Rostamzadeh)


Table 19 (Career and Life):

Seeking funding: negotiating compensation in industry (Samy Bengio)


Table 20 (Career and Life):

Establishing collaborations (Anitha Vijayakumar)


Table 21 (Career and Life):

Surviving graduate school (Katherine Niehaus)


Table 22 (Career and Life):

Building your professional brand (Chelsea Finn)


Table 23 (Career and Life):

Work-life balance (industry) (Wonmin Byeon)


Table 24 (Career and Life):

Life with kids (Sarah Poole)


Table 25 (Career and Life):

Scientific communication (Been Kim)


Table 26 (Career and Life):

Non-traditional paths to machine learning (Jennifer Wei)


Table 27 (Career and Life):

Doing a postdoc I (Hyeji Kim)


Table 28 (Career and Life):

Networking (Bethany Edmunds)


Table 29 (Career and Life):

Democratizing ML research: Non-traditional research methods (Jade Abbott)


Table E (Sponsor):

Apple Internships [Apple] (Lauren Araujo, Lauren Hannah)


Table F (Sponsor):

Task Oriented Dialog Research @ ASAPP [ASAPP] (Ramya Ramakrishnan, Ryan McDonald, Sravana Reddy)


Table G (Sponsor):

Careers in AI and ML at Capital One [Capital One] (Helen Lee-Righter, Vannia Gonzalez Macias)


Table H (Sponsor):

Machine Learning at D. E. Shaw Research [D. E. Shaw Research] (Jocelyn Sunseri)


Table I (Sponsor):

Present and Future of AI Research at Intel [Intel] (Huma Abidi, Lama Nachman)


Table J (Sponsor):

AI Careers at Meta (Beliz Gokkaya, Kavya Srinet, Sahar Karimi)


Table K (Sponsor):

Machine Learning at Microsoft Research [Microsoft] (John Langford, Nicolas Le Roux)


Table L (Sponsor):

From Academia to Quantitative Finance – Careers at PDT Partners [PDT Partners] (Kurt Miller, Winnie Yang)


Table M (Sponsor):

Meet & Greet Qualcomm AI Research [Qualcomm] (Dipika Khullar, Sangeetha Siddegowda, Shreya Kadambi)


Table N (Sponsor):

QuantumBlack Careers Roundtable [QuantumBlack] (Huilin Zeng, Marta Lopez, Xilin Cecilia Shi)


Table O (Sponsor):

Early Career Advice for Industry [Salesforce] (Shelby Heinecke, Vena Li)


Table P (Sponsor):

Software Story for Accelerators and Engineer Experience in a Startup World [SambaNova Systems] (Mary Jo Doherty, Weiwei Chen)


Table Q (Sponsor):

Self-Driven Women: Careers at Waymo [Waymo] (Drago Anguelov, Wei Chai, Chen Wu, Congcong Li, Kevin Peterson)

Sponsor Expo

There will also be sponsor booths in the expo room, staffed at the times below. Sponsor talks are playable by participants on-demand in the Sponsor Expo Room at Gather.Town and at the NeurIPS virtual site (NeurIPS registration required to access).

Virtual Booths (in the Sponsor Expo Room at Gather.Town)

Apple (Fri Dec 10, 20:15 - 21:55 UTC)

Apple at NeurIPS | Career Opportunities | Internship Opportunities | RSVP to Meet Apple | RSVP to Internship Q&A Panel


Capital One (Fri Dec 10, 20:15 - 21:55 UTC)

Learn more about AI and ML at Capital One | Explore Data Science Roles at Capital One


DeepMind (Fri Dec 10, 11:00 - 13:45 UTC)

DeepMind at NeurIPS 2021 - Schedule | DeepMind - Careers Info


D. E. Shaw Research (Fri Dec 10, 13:00 - 13:45 UTC & 20:15 - 21:55 UTC)

D. E. Shaw Research - Brochure


G-Research (Fri Dec 10, 12:45 - 13:45 UTC)

G-Research: Opportunities | G-Research: Kaggle Competition | G-Research: Spring Insight Week


Meta (Fri Dec 10, 20:15 - 21:55 UTC)

Meta AI at NeurIPS 2021 | Meta AI Careers


Microsoft (Fri Dec 10, 20:15 - 21:55 UTC)

Microsoft Research – Emerging Technology, Computer, and Software Research | Microsoft at NeurIPS 2021 - Microsoft Research


NVIDIA (Fri Dec 10, 11:00 - 13:45 UTC & 20:15 - 21:55 UTC)

NVIDIA @ NeurIPS2021 | NVIDIA Careers | Research at NVIDIA


QuantumBlack (Fri Dec 10, 20:15 - 21:55 UTC)


SambaNova Systems (Fri Dec 10, 20:15 - 21:55 UTC)

ML Accelerators and Performance

Sponsor Talks (in the Sponsor Expo Room at Gather.Town and at the NeurIPS virtual site)

Lizi Ottens (Apple)

Machine Learning at Apple


Cat Posey (Capital One)

AI & ML at Capital One


Jocelyn Sunseri (D. E. Shaw Research)

Machine Learning Initiatives at D. E. Shaw Research


Mihaela Rosca, Feryal Behbahani, and Kate Parkyn (DeepMind)

Women at DeepMind - Applying for Technical Roles


Daniela Massiceti (Microsoft)

Advancing real-world few-shot learning with the new ORBIT dataset


Anima Anandkumar (NVIDIA)

Research at NVIDIA: New Core AI and Machine Learning Lab


Garazi Gomez-de-Segura (QuantumBlack)

ML for Engineering design


Anna Bethke (Salesforce)

Actionable Steps to Implement Ethics by Design


Qinghua Li (SambaNova)

SambaNova Systems: ML Accelerators & Performance


Chen Wu (Waymo)

Machine Learning for Autonomous Driving at Waymo

Socials

The following participant-hosted socials will take place before, during, and after the workshop in Gather.Town in the South Garden in WiML Gather.Town. We highly encourage WiML participants to attend, to meet fellow participants in a fun and casual setting! See a description of each social here, and instructions on how to enter the area for each social here!

Pre-workshop socials

Dec 9, 2:00 - 3:00

Indrapriyadarsini Sendilkkumaar, Shahrzad Mahboubi – Optimization Techniques

Ayushi Sharma, Kiana Alikhademi – Applying to and Navigating PhDs

Workshop socials

Dec 10, 3:00 - 4:00

Jenna Hong, Devi Bhattarai – Multidisciplinary AI (Neuroscience, Social Science and Ethics)

Hope Schroeder, Akshita Ramya Kamsali – Natural Language Processing and Computational Social Science

Bing Zhang -- Win and Wine (Fun Social)


Dec 10, 5:30 - 7:00

Mehreen Ali, Anoush Najarian – Privacy and Algorithms of Oppression

Melissa Fabros -- Murder Mystery (Fun Social)


Dec 10, 6:00 - 7:00

Mamatha Thota, Naina Dhingra – Computer Vision Algorithms and Applications

List of Accepted Posters

All participants are required to abide by the WiML code of conduct.

Joint Affinity Groups Poster Session

This poster session will be held jointly with other affinity workshops including Black in AI, LatinX in AI, Queer in AI, and Indigenous in AI.

Poster IDs: J.001—J.190

Time: Tuesday Dec 7, 5:00 - 7:00 UTC

Location: Joint Affinity Groups Poster Session Gather.Town

WiML Poster Session #1

Poster IDs: W001—W040

Time: Thursday Dec 9, 4:45 - 5:45 UTC

Location: WiML Gather.Town Poster Rooms 1 & 2

A listing of posters presented in this session can be found here.

WiML Poster Session #2

Poster IDs: W041—W099

Time: Friday Dec 10, 12:45 - 13:45 UTC

Location: WiML Gather.Town Poster Rooms 3, 4, & 5

A listing of posters presented in this session can be found here.

WiML Poster Session #1: Poster Room 1 (W001 - W019)

Monika M Daryani*; James Caverlee

Emily C Laubscher*; Nitzan Razin; Will Graf; David Van Valen

Sharon Zhang*; Jonathan Huang; Vivek Rathod

Anaelia Ovalle*

Christine Patterson*; Jeffrey Fairbanks; Andres Orbe; Edoardo Serra; Marion Scheepers

Gaurangi Anand*; Richi Nayak

Sujin Ahn*; Minhae Kwon

Natalia Efremova*; Mohamed-el-amine Seddik; Esra Erten

Kristina Ulicna*; Giulia Vallardi; Guillaume Charras; Alan R Lowe

Ellyn Ayton*; Maria Glenski

Xiaomin Li*; Vangelis Metsis

Robin Cosbey*; Maria Glenski

Yaoxin Li*; Alexander Wong; Mohammad Javad Shafiee

Sinjini Mitra*; Ankita Shukla; Rushil Anirudh; Jayaraman Thiagarajan; Pavan Turaga

Daniela F de Albuquerque*; Jack Goffinet; Rachael Wright; John M Pearson

Li Chen*; Purvi Goel; David Yang; Xiang Gao; Ilknur Kaynar Kabul

Brigit Schroeder*; Adam M Smith; Subarna Tripathi

Rachneet Kaur*; Manuel Hernandez; Richard Sowers

Induja Chandrakumar*

WiML Poster Session #1: Poster Room 2 (W026 - W047)

Mengyan Zhang*; Russell Tsuchida; Cheng Soon Ong

Harlin Lee*

Jesutofunmi O Afolayan*

Tejasri Nampally*; Ujwal Sai; Siddha Ganju; Ajay Kumar; Rajalakshmi Pachamuthu; Balaji Naik Banothu

Na Young Jun*

Yujun Yan*; Milad Hashemi; Kevin Swersky; Yaoqing Yang; Danai Koutra

Cynthia Koopman*; David Zammit Mangion; Alexiei Dingli

Anat Kleiman*; Ryan P Adams

Naz Zarreen Oishie*; Banani Roy

Irina Cristali*; Victor Veitch

Lin Gui*; Victor Veitch

Siyu Dai*; Andreas Hofmann; Brian Williams

Shu Liu*

Louisa van Zeeland*; Gracie Ermi

Laura I Galindez Olascoaga*; Alisha Menon; Jan M. Rabaey

Li Chen*; Karen Chen; Purvi Goel; Ilknur Kaynar Kabul

Ye-Ji Mun*; Masha Itkina; Katherine Driggs-Campbell

Abhilasha Katariya*; Jin Ye; Dipal Gupta; Rohit Malshe; Chinmoy Mohapatra; Gautam Natarajan; Liron Yedidsion

Tanvi M Deshpande*; Nitya Mani

Jin Ye*; Dipal Gupta; Abhilasha Katariya; Rohit Malshe; Natarajan Gautam; Liron Yedidsion; Chinmoy Mohapatra

Helen Zhou*; David Childers; Zachary Lipton

Indrapriyadarsini Sendilkkumaar*; Shahrzad Mahboubi; Hiroshi Ninomiya; Takeshi Kamio; Hideki Asai

WiML Poster Session #2: Poster Room 3 (W050 - W071)

Catherine Ordun*; Sanjay Purushotham; Edward Raff

Kai E Priester*; Daniela Fragoso

Seolhwa Lee*; Kisu Yang; Chanjun Park; João Sedoc; Heuiseok Lim

Audrey Chung*; Mahmoud Famouri; Andrew Hryniowski; Alexander Wong

Jana Lang*

Sara Rabhi*; Ronay Ak; Gabriel S P Moreira; Jeong Min Lee; Even Oldridge

Yifu Ding*; Hannah Bloomfield; Malcolm McCulloch

Anjali Jha*

Dieu Thu Le; Verena Weber*; Melanie Bradford

Hallee E Wong*; Maggie Makar; Aniruddh Raghu; John Guttag

Fiorella Wever*; Laura Symul; Victor Garcia; T. Anderson Keller

Kathleen Sucipto*; Archit Khosla; Fedaa Najdawi; Michael Drage; Maryam Pouryahya; Stephanie Hennek; Victoria Mountain; Murray Resnick; Amaro Taylor-Weiner; Deepta Rajan; Ilan Wapinski; Andy Beck

Tina Raissi*; Valentin Raissi; Manuel Giollo; Guglielmo Camporese

Dulshani Withana Thanthri Gamage*

Fatemeh Vahedian*; Ruiyu Li; Puja Trivedi; Di Jin; Danai Koutra

Yuliia Lut*; Michael Wang; Elissa M. Redmiles; Rachel Cummings

S.* Shailja; B.S. Manjunath

Vanya BK*; Balaji Ganesan; Aniket Saxena; Devbrat Sharma; Arvind Agarwal

Michelle Wu*; Zhidong Xiao; Hammadi Nait-charif

Aneri Muni* , Matteo Turchetta, Andreas Krause

Mariia Dobko*; Mariia Kokshaikyna

Varsha Kishore*; Xiangyu Chen; Yan Wang; Boyi Li; Kilian Weinberger

WiML Poster Session #2: Poster Room 4 (W078 - W088)

Shubhada Agrawal*; Sandeep K Juneja; Wouter M Koolen

Siddha Ganju*; Sayak Paul

Raquel Marasigan*

Hanjie Chen*; Yangfeng Ji

Elisa Negrini*; Giovanna Citti; Luca Capogna

Amy Zhang*; Daniel Hammer; Aaron Brookhouse; Francesca Spezzano; Liljana Babinkostova

Hetvi Jethwani*; Bhumika Chopra

Gouri Deshpande*; Guenther Ruhe; Chad Saunder

Eda Bayram*

Shruti Karulkar*; Louvere Walker-Hannon; Sarah Mohamed

Ana-Andreea Stoica*; Christos Papadimitriou

WiML Poster Session #2: Poster Room 5 (W106 - W130)

Aurélie Boisbunon*; Carlo Fanara; Ingrid Grenet; Jonathan Daeden; Alexis Vighi; Marc Schoenauer

Mónika Farsang*

Myrto Limnios*; Stephan Clémençon; Nicolas Vayatis

Chentian Jiang*; Chris Lucas

Zaharah Bukhsh*; Nils Jansen; Hajo Molegraaf

Emese Sükei*; Pablo M Olmos; Antonio Artés

Maitreyi Chitale*; Anoush Najarian; Helen Chigirinskaya; Sindhuja Parimalarangan; Louvere Walker-Hannon; Rajasi Desai; Kyle Rawding; Brian Liu

Simra Shahid*; Tanay Anand; Sumit Bhatia; Nikaash Puri; Balaji Krishnamurthy; Nikitha Srikanth

Jessica Schrouff*; Natalie GHarris; Sanmi Koyejo; Ibrahim Alabdulmohsin; Eva Schnider; Krista Opsahl-Ong; Alex Brown; Subhrajit Roy; Diana Mincu; Christina Chen; Awa Chen; Yuan Liu; Vivek Natarajan; Katherine Heller; Alexander D'Amour

Magdalena Wiercioch*; Johannes Kirchmair

Ciyue Shen*; Collin Schlager; Deepta Rajan; Victoria Mountain; Ilan Wapinski; Amaro Taylor-Weiner; Maryam Pouryahya; Robert Egger

Jennifer Hu*; Roger Levy; Noga Zaslavsky

Anastasiya Usenko*; Joonseok Kim; Ellyn Ayton; Svitlana Volkova

Jasmine R Eshun*; Maria Glenski; Svitlana Volkova

Charupriya Sharma*; Peter van Beek

Bhanushee Sharma*; Vijil Chenthamarakshan; Amit Dhurandhar; Shiranee Pereira; James Hendler; Jonathan S Dordick; Payel Das

Shailaja K Sampat*

Hanxiao Chen*

Eluwumi Folake Buraimoh*; Ritesh Ajoodha; Kershree Padayachee

Evelyn C Fitzgerald*; Tingyan Deng; Daniel Chen; Lijing Wang; Jackelyn Hwang

Ramat Ayobami Salami*; Sakinat O Folorunso

Dieu Thu Le; Verena Weber*; Melanie Bradford

Maryam Pouryahya*; Jason Wang; Kenneth Leidal; Harsha Pokkalla; Dinkar Juyal; Zahil Shanis; Aryan Pedawia; Quang Huy Le; Victoria Mountain; Sara Hoffman; Murray Resnick; Michael Montalto; Andy Beck; Katy Wack; Ilan Wapinski; Oscar Carrasco-Zevallos; Amaro Taylor-Weiner

Anastasiya Travina*

Anna Mészáros*; Anna Kerekes; Ferenc Huszar