Krikamol Muandet

Machine Learning for Observational Studies

Empirical Inference

Office: N4.002
Max-Planck-Ring 4
72076 Tübingen
Germany

7071601559

krikamol.muandet

http://krikamol.org

Find me on Linkedin

Find me on Google Scholar

GitHub Repository

Follow me on Twitter

My current research aims to develop machine learning techniques that will bridge the gap between randomized experiments and empirical inference, enabling machines to better learn causality from data. It has numerous applications in observational studies, medical diagnosis, economics, and online advertisement, for example. To this end, I am employing tools and analyses from related disciplines including but not limited to

Statistical learning theory
Kernels and reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs)
Hilbert space embedding of probability distributions
Potential outcome framework and Rubin's causal model

In general, I aim to address the most fundamental problems in machine learning and to leverage such insights in solving real-world problems in related disciplines. You can find more information about me and my work at http://krikamol.org.

Kernel methods Observational studies Causal inference RKHS

These are examples of projects I have been working on.

Counterfactual mean embedding
Counterfactual policy gradient for observational studies
Randomization via generalization

My full research statement can also be found at http://krikamol.org/krikamol-research.pdf.

Kernel Methods

A Hilbert space embedding of distributions (KME)---which generalizes the feature map of individual points to probability measures---has emerged as a powerful machinery for probabilistic modeling, machine learning, and causal discovery. The idea behind this framework is to map distributions into a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RK...

Bernhard Schölkopf Ilya Tolstikhin David Lopez-Paz Krikamol Muandet

28 results (View BibTeX file of all listed publications)

2018

Counterfactual Mean Embedding: A Kernel Method for Nonparametric Causal Inference

Muandet, K., Kanagawa, M., Saengkyongam, S., Marukata, S.

Workshop on Machine Learning for Causal Inference, Counterfactual Prediction, and Autonomous Action (CausalML) at ICML, July 2018 (conference)

[BibTex]

2018

Muandet, K., Kanagawa, M., Saengkyongam, S., Marukata, S. Counterfactual Mean Embedding: A Kernel Method for Nonparametric Causal Inference Workshop on Machine Learning for Causal Inference, Counterfactual Prediction, and Autonomous Action (CausalML) at ICML, July 2018 (conference)

[BibTex]

Design and Analysis of the NIPS 2016 Review Process

Shah*, N., Tabibian*, B., Muandet, K., Guyon, I., von Luxburg, U.

Journal of Machine Learning Research, 19(49):1-34, 2018, *equal contribution (article)

arXiv link (url) [BibTex]

Shah*, N., Tabibian*, B., Muandet, K., Guyon, I., von Luxburg, U. Design and Analysis of the NIPS 2016 Review Process Journal of Machine Learning Research, 19(49):1-34, 2018, *equal contribution (article)

arXiv link (url) [BibTex]

Counterfactual Mean Embedding: A Kernel Method for Nonparametric Causal Inference

Muandet, K., Kanagawa, M., Saengkyongam, S., Marukata, S.

Arxiv e-prints, arXiv:1805.08845v1 [stat.ML], 2018 (article)

Abstract

This paper introduces a novel Hilbert space representation of a counterfactual distribution---called counterfactual mean embedding (CME)---with applications in nonparametric causal inference. Counterfactual prediction has become an ubiquitous tool in machine learning applications, such as online advertisement, recommendation systems, and medical diagnosis, whose performance relies on certain interventions. To infer the outcomes of such interventions, we propose to embed the associated counterfactual distribution into a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) endowed with a positive definite kernel. Under appropriate assumptions, the CME allows us to perform causal inference over the entire landscape of the counterfactual distribution. The CME can be estimated consistently from observational data without requiring any parametric assumption about the underlying distributions. We also derive a rate of convergence which depends on the smoothness of the conditional mean and the Radon-Nikodym derivative of the underlying marginal distributions. Our framework can deal with not only real-valued outcome, but potentially also more complex and structured outcomes such as images, sequences, and graphs. Lastly, our experimental results on off-policy evaluation tasks demonstrate the advantages of the proposed estimator.

arXiv [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Kanagawa, M., Saengkyongam, S., Marukata, S. Counterfactual Mean Embedding: A Kernel Method for Nonparametric Causal Inference Arxiv e-prints, arXiv:1805.08845v1 [stat.ML], 2018 (article)

arXiv [BibTex]

Local Temporal Bilinear Pooling for Fine-grained Action Parsing

Zhang, Y., Tang, S., Muandet, K., Jarvers, C., Neumann, H.

arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.01922, 2018 (article)

Abstract

Fine-grained temporal action parsing is important in many applications, such as daily activity understanding, human motion analysis, surgical robotics and others requiring subtle and precise operations in a long-term period. In this paper we propose a novel bilinear pooling operation, which is used in intermediate layers of a temporal convolutional encoder-decoder net. In contrast to other work, our proposed bilinear pooling is learnable and hence can capture more complex local statistics than the conventional counterpart. In addition, we introduce exact lower-dimension representations of our bilinear forms, so that the dimensionality is reduced with neither information loss nor extra computation. We perform intensive experiments to quantitatively analyze our model and show the superior performances to other state-of-the-art work on various datasets.

video demo pdf link (url) [BibTex]

Zhang, Y., Tang, S., Muandet, K., Jarvers, C., Neumann, H. Local Temporal Bilinear Pooling for Fine-grained Action Parsing arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.01922, 2018 (article)

video demo pdf link (url) [BibTex]

2017

Minimax Estimation of Kernel Mean Embeddings

Tolstikhin, I., Sriperumbudur, B., Muandet, K.

Journal of Machine Learning Research, 18(86):1-47, 2017 (article)

link (url) [BibTex]

2017

Tolstikhin, I., Sriperumbudur, B., Muandet, K. Minimax Estimation of Kernel Mean Embeddings Journal of Machine Learning Research, 18(86):1-47, 2017 (article)

link (url) [BibTex]

Kernel Mean Embedding of Distributions: A Review and Beyond

Muandet, K., Fukumizu, K., Sriperumbudur, B., Schölkopf, B.

Foundations and Trends in Machine Learning, 10(1-2):1-141, 2017 (article)

DOI [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Fukumizu, K., Sriperumbudur, B., Schölkopf, B. Kernel Mean Embedding of Distributions: A Review and Beyond Foundations and Trends in Machine Learning, 10(1-2):1-141, 2017 (article)

DOI [BibTex]

2016

TerseSVM : A Scalable Approach for Learning Compact Models in Large-scale Classification

Babbar, R., Muandet, K., Schölkopf, B.

Proceedings of the 2016 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM), pages: 234-242, (Editors: Sanjay Chawla Venkatasubramanian and Wagner Meira), May 2016 (conference)

DOI [BibTex]

2016

Babbar, R., Muandet, K., Schölkopf, B. TerseSVM : A Scalable Approach for Learning Compact Models in Large-scale Classification Proceedings of the 2016 SIAM International Conference on Data Mining (SDM), pages: 234-242, (Editors: Sanjay Chawla Venkatasubramanian and Wagner Meira), May 2016 (conference)

DOI [BibTex]

Kernel Mean Shrinkage Estimators

Muandet, K., Sriperumbudur, B., Fukumizu, K., Gretton, A., Schölkopf, B.

Journal of Machine Learning Research, 17(48):1-41, 2016 (article)

link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Sriperumbudur, B., Fukumizu, K., Gretton, A., Schölkopf, B. Kernel Mean Shrinkage Estimators Journal of Machine Learning Research, 17(48):1-41, 2016 (article)

link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

2015

From Points to Probability Measures: A Statistical Learning on Distributions with Kernel Mean Embedding

Muandet, K.

University of Tübingen, Germany, University of Tübingen, Germany, September 2015 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

2015

Muandet, K. From Points to Probability Measures: A Statistical Learning on Distributions with Kernel Mean Embedding University of Tübingen, Germany, University of Tübingen, Germany, September 2015 (phdthesis)

[BibTex]

The Randomized Causation Coefficient

Lopez-Paz, D., Muandet, K., Recht, B.

Journal of Machine Learning, 16, pages: 2901-2907, 2015 (article)

link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Lopez-Paz, D., Muandet, K., Recht, B. The Randomized Causation Coefficient Journal of Machine Learning, 16, pages: 2901-2907, 2015 (article)

link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Computing Functions of Random Variables via Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space Representations

Schölkopf, B., Muandet, K., Fukumizu, K., Harmeling, S., Peters, J.

Statistics and Computing , 25(4):755-766, 2015 (article)

DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Schölkopf, B., Muandet, K., Fukumizu, K., Harmeling, S., Peters, J. Computing Functions of Random Variables via Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Space Representations Statistics and Computing , 25(4):755-766, 2015 (article)

DOI Project Page [BibTex]

Towards a Learning Theory of Cause-Effect Inference

Lopez-Paz, D., Muandet, K., Schölkopf, B., Tolstikhin, I.

In Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Machine Learning, 37, pages: 1452–1461, JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings, (Editors: F. Bach and D. Blei), JMLR, ICML, 2015 (inproceedings)

Web Project Page [BibTex]

Lopez-Paz, D., Muandet, K., Schölkopf, B., Tolstikhin, I. Towards a Learning Theory of Cause-Effect Inference In Proceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Machine Learning, 37, pages: 1452–1461, JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings, (Editors: F. Bach and D. Blei), JMLR, ICML, 2015 (inproceedings)

Web Project Page [BibTex]

2014

A Permutation-Based Kernel Conditional Independence Test

Doran, G., Muandet, K., Zhang, K., Schölkopf, B.

In Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI2014), pages: 132-141, (Editors: Nevin L. Zhang and Jin Tian), AUAI Press Corvallis, Oregon, UAI2014, 2014 (inproceedings)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

2014

Doran, G., Muandet, K., Zhang, K., Schölkopf, B. A Permutation-Based Kernel Conditional Independence Test In Proceedings of the 30th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI2014), pages: 132-141, (Editors: Nevin L. Zhang and Jin Tian), AUAI Press Corvallis, Oregon, UAI2014, 2014 (inproceedings)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

Kernel Mean Estimation via Spectral Filtering

Muandet, K., Sriperumbudur, B., Schölkopf, B.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 27, pages: 1-9, (Editors: Z. Ghahramani, M. Welling, C. Cortes, N.D. Lawrence and K.Q. Weinberger), Curran Associates, Inc., 28th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2014 (inproceedings)

Web link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Sriperumbudur, B., Schölkopf, B. Kernel Mean Estimation via Spectral Filtering In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 27, pages: 1-9, (Editors: Z. Ghahramani, M. Welling, C. Cortes, N.D. Lawrence and K.Q. Weinberger), Curran Associates, Inc., 28th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2014 (inproceedings)

Web link (url) Project Page [BibTex]

Single-Source Domain Adaptation with Target and Conditional Shift

Zhang, K., Schölkopf, B., Muandet, K., Wang, Z., Zhou, Z., Persello, C.

In Regularization, Optimization, Kernels, and Support Vector Machines, pages: 427-456, 19, Chapman & Hall/CRC Machine Learning & Pattern Recognition, (Editors: Suykens, J. A. K., Signoretto, M. and Argyriou, A.), Chapman and Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, USA, 2014 (inbook)

Project Page [BibTex]

Zhang, K., Schölkopf, B., Muandet, K., Wang, Z., Zhou, Z., Persello, C. Single-Source Domain Adaptation with Target and Conditional Shift In Regularization, Optimization, Kernels, and Support Vector Machines, pages: 427-456, 19, Chapman & Hall/CRC Machine Learning & Pattern Recognition, (Editors: Suykens, J. A. K., Signoretto, M. and Argyriou, A.), Chapman and Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, USA, 2014 (inbook)

Project Page [BibTex]

Kernel Mean Estimation and Stein Effect

Muandet, K., Fukumizu, K., Sriperumbudur, B., Gretton, A., Schölkopf, B.

In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Machine Learning, W&CP 32 (1), pages: 10-18, (Editors: Eric P. Xing and Tony Jebara), JMLR, ICML, 2014 (inproceedings)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Fukumizu, K., Sriperumbudur, B., Gretton, A., Schölkopf, B. Kernel Mean Estimation and Stein Effect In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Machine Learning, W&CP 32 (1), pages: 10-18, (Editors: Eric P. Xing and Tony Jebara), JMLR, ICML, 2014 (inproceedings)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

2013

Domain adaptation under Target and Conditional Shift

Zhang, K., Schölkopf, B., Muandet, K., Wang, Z.

In Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Machine Learning, W&CP 28 (3), pages: 819–827, (Editors: S Dasgupta and D McAllester), JMLR, ICML, 2013 (inproceedings)

PDF Web Project Page [BibTex]

2013

Zhang, K., Schölkopf, B., Muandet, K., Wang, Z. Domain adaptation under Target and Conditional Shift In Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Machine Learning, W&CP 28 (3), pages: 819–827, (Editors: S Dasgupta and D McAllester), JMLR, ICML, 2013 (inproceedings)

PDF Web Project Page [BibTex]

Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation

Muandet, K., Balduzzi, D., Schölkopf, B.

30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML2013), 2013 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Balduzzi, D., Schölkopf, B. Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation 30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML2013), 2013 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

One-class Support Measure Machines for Group Anomaly Detection

Muandet, K., Schölkopf, B.

In Proceedings 29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), pages: 449-458, (Editors: Ann Nicholson and Padhraic Smyth), AUAI Press, Corvallis, Oregon, UAI, 2013 (inproceedings)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Schölkopf, B. One-class Support Measure Machines for Group Anomaly Detection In Proceedings 29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), pages: 449-458, (Editors: Ann Nicholson and Padhraic Smyth), AUAI Press, Corvallis, Oregon, UAI, 2013 (inproceedings)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

One-class Support Measure Machines for Group Anomaly Detection

Muandet, K., Schölkopf, B.

29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), 2013 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Schölkopf, B. One-class Support Measure Machines for Group Anomaly Detection 29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), 2013 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation

Muandet, K., Balduzzi, D., Schölkopf, B.

In Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Machine Learning, W&CP 28(1), pages: 10-18, (Editors: S Dasgupta and D McAllester), JMLR, ICML, 2013, Volume 28, number 1 (inproceedings)

Web Project Page [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Balduzzi, D., Schölkopf, B. Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation In Proceedings of the 30th International Conference on Machine Learning, W&CP 28(1), pages: 10-18, (Editors: S Dasgupta and D McAllester), JMLR, ICML, 2013, Volume 28, number 1 (inproceedings)

Web Project Page [BibTex]

Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation

Muandet, K.

30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML2013), 2013 (talk)

PDF [BibTex]

Muandet, K. Domain Generalization via Invariant Feature Representation 30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML2013), 2013 (talk)

PDF [BibTex]

2012

Support Vector Machines, Support Measure Machines, and Quasar Target Selection

Muandet, K.

Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics (CCPP), New York University, December 2012 (talk)

[BibTex]

2012

Muandet, K. Support Vector Machines, Support Measure Machines, and Quasar Target Selection Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics (CCPP), New York University, December 2012 (talk)

[BibTex]

Hilbert Space Embedding for Dirichlet Process Mixtures

Muandet, K.

NIPS Workshop on Confluence between Kernel Methods and Graphical Models, December 2012 (talk)

[BibTex]

Muandet, K. Hilbert Space Embedding for Dirichlet Process Mixtures NIPS Workshop on Confluence between Kernel Methods and Graphical Models, December 2012 (talk)

[BibTex]

Support Measure Machines for Quasar Target Selection

Muandet, K.

Astro Imaging Workshop, 2012 (talk)

Abstract

In this talk I will discuss the problem of quasar target selection. The objects attributes in astronomy such as fluxes are often subjected to substantial and heterogeneous measurement uncertainties, especially for the medium-redshift between 2.2 and 3.5 quasars which is relatively rare and must be targeted down to g ~ 22 mag. Most of the previous works for quasar target selection includes UV-excess, kernel density estimation, a likelihood approach, and artificial neural network cannot directly deal with the heterogeneous input uncertainties. Recently, extreme deconvolution (XD) has been used to tackle this problem in a well-posed manner. In this work, we present a discriminative approach for quasar target selection that can deal with input uncertainties directly. To do so, we represent each object as a Gaussian distribution whose mean is the object's attribute vector and covariance is the given flux measurement uncertainty. Given a training set of Gaussian distributions, the support measure machines (SMMs) algorithm are trained and used to build the quasar targeting catalog. Preliminary results will also be presented. Joint work with Jo Bovy and Bernhard Sch{\"o}lkopf

Web [BibTex]

Muandet, K. Support Measure Machines for Quasar Target Selection Astro Imaging Workshop, 2012 (talk)

Web [BibTex]

Learning from Distributions via Support Measure Machines

Muandet, K., Fukumizu, K., Dinuzzo, F., Schölkopf, B.

26th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2012 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Fukumizu, K., Dinuzzo, F., Schölkopf, B. Learning from Distributions via Support Measure Machines 26th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2012 (poster)

PDF [BibTex]

Learning from distributions via support measure machines

Muandet, K., Fukumizu, K., Dinuzzo, F., Schölkopf, B.

In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 25, pages: 10-18, (Editors: P Bartlett, FCN Pereira, CJC. Burges, L Bottou, and KQ Weinberger), Curran Associates Inc., 26th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2012 (inproceedings)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

Muandet, K., Fukumizu, K., Dinuzzo, F., Schölkopf, B. Learning from distributions via support measure machines In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 25, pages: 10-18, (Editors: P Bartlett, FCN Pereira, CJC. Burges, L Bottou, and KQ Weinberger), Curran Associates Inc., 26th Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), 2012 (inproceedings)

PDF Project Page [BibTex]

Hilbert space embedding for Dirichlet Process mixtures

Muandet, K.

In NIPS Workshop on confluence between kernel methods and graphical models, 2012 (inproceedings)

arXiv Project Page [BibTex]

Muandet, K. Hilbert space embedding for Dirichlet Process mixtures In NIPS Workshop on confluence between kernel methods and graphical models, 2012 (inproceedings)

arXiv Project Page [BibTex]