MIDAS is hosting a Sequential Decision Making Forum on Friday, March 10th with presentations from methodologists working on sequential decision making as well as clinicians and domain scientists who apply these methodologies in healthcare and other fields. The forum will take place on the 10th floor of Weiser Hall at 500 Church Street in Ann Arbor from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Please register here if you plan to join: https://myumi.ch/Rp9Ey

The University of Michigan is uniquely situated to enable advancement in this field of research, and MIDAS invites U-M researchers across a broad range of disciplines to join in discussion about how challenges in their domains may be addressed through the application of sequential decision making methodologies. The morning session (9:00 AM - 11:30 AM) is open to all researchers at U-M who have interest in this area.

In addition, U-M faculty are invited to join a working lunch from 11:30 - 1:00 PM (immediately following the morning session) where the primary agenda item is to propose and develop ideas regarding a future center grant. Participants will have the opportunity to pitch their own ideas for a center focused on sequential decision making research, and questions such as the following will be discussed:

1. Which developing SDM methodologies have potential applications that could be further developed through U-M faculty collaborations?
2. What should be the scope of a sequential decision making center at U-M?

If you plan to attend the working lunch, please be sure to register at this link: https://myumi.ch/Rp9Ey

Schedule of events:

9:00 AM - Welcome Remarks

Vijay Subramanian | Associate Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department

9:15 AM - Sequential Decision Making: Applications and Methodologies

Moderator: Walter Dempsey | Assistant Professor, Department of Biostatistics, and Data Science for Dynamic Intervention Decision-making Center (d3c)

Speakers:
Jessica Golbus | Clinical Instructor, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Michigan Medicine
Talk TBA

Brian Denton | Stephen M. Pollock Professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering and the Chair of the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, and Professor, Department of Urology, Michigan Medicine
"Optimization in the Presence of Model Ambiguity in Markov Decision Processes"

Lei Ying | Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department
"Online Safe Learning and Decision Making"

Rick Lewis | Director, Weinberg Institute for Cognitive Science and John R. Anderson Collegiate Professor of Psychology, Linguistics and Cognitive Science
"Reinforcement Learning Agents that Discover What to Learn (and the New Frontiers of AI and RL in the Era of ChatGPT)"

11:30 AM - Working lunch : Discussing a Sequential Decision Making center at U-M

Moderator: Ambuj Tewari | Professor, Department of Statistics and Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science