Request for Student Travel Support to the Isaac Newton Institute Workshops on Statistical Methods for Complex, High-Dimensional Data

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

The Isaac Newton Institute at the University of Cambridge has organized a six-month research program on "Statistical Methods for Complex, High-Dimensional Data" that starts in January, 2008. This program will bring together some of the world's foremost researchers on critical problems related to manifold learning, "large p, small n", model capacity, PAC bounds, overcomplete bases, kernel methods, and related topics. The investigator will use the NSF funds to ensure that ten of the best U.S. graduate students working in this area have the opportunity to travel to Cambridge and to participate in one of the three workshops that anchor the research program. The Isaac Newton Institute is the major center for mathematical research in Europe. For 2008, it has organized a program that addresses the major challenge problem confronting statistics in this decade: how to analyze highly multivariate and complex data sets. Progress on this problem would significantly improve the understanding of genetic data from microarray experiments, the analysis of atmospheric data from distributed sensor systems, complex financial models, proteomics, text mining, medical imaging, and many other scientific domains. The NSF funds in this award will be used to support travel by 10 of the top U.S. graduate students working in these problem areas to attend one of the the three workshops that have been organized as part of the research program.