2021

• Amanda Gentzel presented  How and Why to Use Experimental Data to Evaluate Methods for Observational Causal Inference at ICML 2021. Work with Purva Pruthi, and David Jensen. (7/21/2021)
• Purva Pruthi successfully passed her portfolio exam and entered into candidacy in our PhD program. (5/3/2021)
• Amanda Gentzel successfully defended her dissertation. (2/22/2021)
• Jack Kenney joined KDL. (January 2021)

2020

• Sam Witty successfully passed his portfolio exam and entered into candidacy in our PhD program. (12/13/2020)
• Sam Witty presented “Bayesian Causal Inference via Probabilistic Program Synthesis” at ProbProg 2020. (10/23/2020) Work with Alex Lew (MIT, equal contribution), David Jensen, and Vikash Mansinghka (MIT).
• Erica Cai, Kate Avery and Pracheta Amaranath joined KDL. (Fall 2020)
• Emma Tosch successfully defended her dissertation. (8/26/2020)
• Sam Witty presented “Causal Inference using Gaussian Processes with Structured Latent Confounders” at ICML 2020. (7/16/2020) Work with Kenta Takatsu, David Jensen, and Vikash Mansinghka (MIT).
• Purva Pruthi joined KDL. (June 2020)
• Akanksha Atrey presented “Exploratory not Explanatory: Counterfactual Analysis of Saliency Maps for Deep RL” at ICLR 2020. (4/27/2020) Work with Kaleigh Clary and David Jensen.
• Kenta Takatsu and Andy Zane joined KDL. (January 2020)

2019

• Akanksha Atrey presented “Evaluating Saliency Maps Using Interventions” at the NeurIPS 2019 Women in Machine Learning workshop. (12/9/2019) Work with Kaleigh Clary and David Jensen.
• Amanda Gentzel presented The Case for Evaluating Causal Models Using Interventional Measures and Empirical Data at NeurIPS 2019. (12/10/2019) Work with Daniel Garant (C&S Wholesale Grocers) and David Jensen.
• Emma Tosch‘s work on Planalyzer was featured in The morning paper. (11/22/2019)
• Emma Tosch presented PlanAlyzer: Assessing Threats to the Validity of Online Experiments at OOPSLA 2019. (10/23/2019) Work with Eytan Bakshy, Emery Berger, David Jensen, and Eliot Moss.
• Amanda Gentzel successfully defended her dissertation proposal. (10/10/2019)
• Emma Tosch successfully defended her dissertation proposal. (9/23/2019)
• Justin Clarke joined KDL. (Fall 2019)
• David Jensen presented Object Conditioning for Causal Inference at UAI 2019. (7/25/2019) Work with Javier Burroni and Matt Rattigan.
• Akanksha Atrey presented Identifying When Effect Restoration Will Improve Estimates of Causal Effect at SDM 2019. (5/3/2019) Work with Hüseyin Oktay and David Jensen.
• Akanksha Atrey received an honorable mention for her NSF GRFP application. (April 2019)

2018

• Four KDL submissions were presented at NeurIPS workshops (12/7-12/8/18):
  • Amanda Gentzel presented The Case for Evaluating Causal Models Using Interventional Measures and Empirical Data at the Causality Workshop. Work with Daniel Garant (C&S Wholesale Grocers) and David Jensen.
  • Kaleigh Clary presented Let’s Play Again: Variability of Deep Reinforcement Learning Agents in Atari Environments at the Critiquing and Correcting Trends in Machine Learning Workshop. Work with Emma Tosch, John Foley (Smith College), and David Jensen.
  • Sam Witty presented Generalization in Deep Reinforcement Learning at the Critiquing and Correcting Trends in Machine Learning Workshop. Work with Jun Ki Lee (Brown University), Emma Tosch, Akanksha Atrey, Michael Littman (Brown University), and David Jensen.
  • Emma Tosch presented Toybox: Better Atari Environments for Testing Reinforcement Learning Agents at the Systems for Machine Learning Workshop. Work with John Foley (Smith College), Kaleigh Clary, David Jensen.
• Sam Witty presented “Causal Graphs versus Causal Programs: The Case of Conditional Branching” at ProbProg 2018. (10/5/2018)
• Emma Tosch presented “Mocking Atari for Deep Reinforcement Learning” at IBM AI Systems Day. (10/3/2018)
• David Jensen presented “Toward Learning Causal models of Complex Phenomena” at the IBM Causal Inference Workshop. (10/3/2018)
• Reilly Grant joins KDL. (September 2018)
• David Jensen was appointed as Director of the UMass Computational Social Science Institute. (July 2018)
• Akanksha Atrey received the Lori A. Clarke Scholarship in Computer Science 2018 from CICS, UMass Amherst. (June 2018)
• Kaleigh Clary was selected to participate in this year’s class of fellows at the Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) Summer Program at the University of Chicago. (March 2018)
• Akanksha Atrey was selected to attend the CRA-W Grad Cohort for Women Workshop in April.
• David Jensen gave a talk at CMU’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy on “Explainable Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges for Public Policy.” (2/19/2018)
• David Jensen gave a distinguished lecture at the Center for Causal Discovery at the University of Pittsburgh on “The Case for Empirical Evaluation of Methods for Causal Modeling.” (2/15/2018)
• Javier Burroni presented our poster on “Interactive Writing and Debugging of Bayesian Probabilistic Programs” at the Workshop on Probabilistic Programming Languages, Semantics, and Systems. (1/9/2018)

2017

• Kaleigh Clary successfully passed her portfolio exam and entered into candidacy in our PhD program. (12/13/2017)
• Sam Witty gave a tutorial on “Causal Inference with Graphical Models” for the UMass Graduate Researchers in Data (11/29/2017).
• KDL’s work on explainable artificial intelligence was noted in a New York Times Magazine article (11/21/2017)
• Hüseyin Oktay successfully defended his dissertation (11/20/2017).
• Sam Witty gave an invited talk for the MIT Probabilistic Computing Project on “Computational Representations of Causality” (11/2/2017).
• Akanksha Atrey presented her paper “Do Individuals Smile More in Diverse Social Company? Studying Smiles and Diversity Via Social Media Photos” at ACM Multimedia 2017 (10/26/17).
• Katerina Marazopoulou successfully defended her dissertation (7/28/2017).
• David Jensen gave a keynote talk at Time and Causality in the Sciences, June 7-9 at Stevens Institute of Technology on “Overcoming the Poverty of Mechanism in Causal Models.”
• David Jensen and KDL Alum Brian Gallagher, along with UMass colleagues John Burgess and Brian Levine, received the IEEE INFOCOM 2017 Test of Time Paper Award for their 2006 paper MaxProp: Routing for Vehicle-Based Disruption-Tolerant Networks.
• David Arbour successfully defended his dissertation (2/16/2017).