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Spring 2011 GRASP Seminar – Amit Singer, Princeton University, “Vector Diffusion Maps: Theory and Applications”

April 8, 2011 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm

Abstract: Motivated by problems in structural biology, specifically cryo-electron microscopy, we introduce vector diffusion maps (VDM), a new mathematical framework for organizing and analyzing high dimensional data sets, images and shapes. VDM is a mathematical and algorithmic generalization of diffusion maps and other non-linear dimensionality reduction methods, such as LLE, ISOMAP and Laplacian eigenmaps. While existing methods are either directly or indirectly related to the heat kernel for functions over the data, VDM is based on the heat kernel for vector fields. VDM provides tools for organizing complex data sets, embedding them in a low dimensional space and interpolating and regressing vector fields over the data. In particular, it equips the data with a metric, which we refer to as the vector diffusion distance. In the manifold learning setup, where the data set is distributed on (or near) a low dimensional manifold M^d embedded in R^p, we prove the relationship between VDM and the connection-Laplacian operator for vector fields over the manifold. Applications to structural biology (cryo-electron microscopy and NMR spectroscopy), computer vision and shape space analysis will be discussed.

Presenter

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Amit Singer is an Associate Professor of Mathematics and a member of the Executive Committee of the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics (PACM) at Princeton University. He joint Princeton as an Assistant Professor in 2008. From 2005 to 2008 he was a Gibbs Assistant Professor in Applied Mathematics at the Department of Mathematics, Yale University. Singer received the BSc degree in Physics and Mathematics and the PhD degree in Applied Mathematics from Tel Aviv University (Israel), in 1997 and 2005, respectively. He served in the Israeli Defense Forces during 1997-2003. He was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2010) and the Haim Nessyahu Prize for Best PhD in Mathematics in Israel (2007). His current research in applied mathematics focuses on problems of massive data analysis and structural biology.

Details

Date:
April 8, 2011
Time:
11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Event Category: