Machine Learning Coffee Seminar: Professor Jukka Corander, University of Helsinki and University of Oslo

Weekly seminars held jointly by the Aalto University and the University of Helsinki.

Helsinki region machine learning researchers will start our week by an exciting machine learning talk and discussion over coffee before and after the talk. The talks will start 9:15, with coffee served from 9:00. The venue is Exactum D123, Kumpula Campus.

Likelihood-free Inference and Predictions for Computational Epidemology

Jukka Corander
Professor, University of Helsinki and University of Oslo

Abstract:

Simulator-based models often allow inference and predictions under more realistic assumptions than those employed in standard statistical models. For example, the observation model for an underlying stochastic process can be more freely chosen to reflect the characteristics of the data gathering procedure. A major obstacle for such models is the intractability of the likelihood, which has to a large extent hampered their practical applicability. I will discuss recent advances in likelihood-free inference that greatly accelerate the model fitting process by exploiting a combination of machine learning techniques. Applications to several novel models in infectious disease epidemiology are used to illustrate the potential offered by this approach.