Efficient solutions for large scale learning: applications in speaker recognition and geostatistics

GRAND Seminar 12:00 noon, Nov. 09, Tue., 2010, ENGR 4201

Balaji Vasan
PhD candidate
Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland.

Abstract:

With the ease of data collection, the amount of data available for learning has increased by several folds. This requires any learning technique being used to scale well to large data with many attributes/features. This talk will focus on new machine learning solutions that address the scalability. The applications considered include weather data modeling, speaker recognition and computer vision.

The talk will be divided into two parts; in the first half, the focus will be on Gaussian process regression (GPR). Gaussian process regression is a non-parametric learning technique that has been proven to be robust, but is hindered by its high computational cost. Acceleration of GPR on graphical processors and iterative Krylov solvers will be presented and the framework would be extended to an efficient geostatistical kriging for weather data interpolation. The second half of the talk will focus on a new partial least squares (PLS) regression framework for speaker recognition. PLS has already been applied in several computer vision problems, its extension to speaker recognition in a “supervector” space will be discussed. The new framework has been accelerated on graphical processors, as well.

Bio:

Balaji Vasan Srinivasan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park. He works with Prof. Ramani Duraiswami and is also associated with the Perceptual Interfaces and Reality Lab and University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). His current research broadly focuses on developing scalable machine learning solutions for problems in various domains including speaker recognition, weather modeling and computer vision. He completed his Masters in Electrical Engineering in Dec 2008 from University of Maryland with a focus on signal processing and Bachelors in Electrical Engineering in July 2006 from College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai with a focus on power electronics.