HDR TRIPODS: Collaborative Research: Institute for Data, Econometrics, Algorithms and Learning

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The Institute for Data, Econometrics, Algorithms, and Learning (IDEAL) is a multi-discipline (computer science, statistics, economics, electrical engineering, and operations research) and multi-institution (Northwestern University, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, and University of Chicago) collaborative institute that focuses on key aspects of the theoretical foundations of data science. The institute will support the study of foundational problems related to machine learning, high-dimensional data analysis and optimization in both strategic and non-strategic environments. The primary activity of the institute will be thematically focused quarters which will coordinate graduate course work with workshops and external visitors. The institute will facilitate collaboration between Chicago-area institutions through a number of initiatives, and across multiple disciplines. Several components of the research agenda have direct applications areas, and the PIs will involve practitioners in development economics, online markets, public policy, as well as data scientists. The research areas supported by the institute focus on three broad themes: (1) High dimensional data analysis, to address algorithmic and statistical challenges in dealing with high dimensional data, and investigate topics like metric embeddings, sketching, and problems in unsupervised learning; (2) Data Science in Strategic Environments, to address computational and information theoretic challenges in econometric models of strategic behavior like inference on high-dimensional structural parameter spaces, dealing with unobserved heterogeneity, partial identification, and machine learning in econometrics; and (3) Machine learning and optimization, to address foundational questions in both continuous and discrete optimization and its use in machine learning including topics like representation learning, robustness in learning, and provable bounds for non-convex optimization. Initially, six research topics will be selected that tie interests across the institutions: inference and data science on networks; theory of deep learning; incentives in shared data infrastructure; robustness in high-dimensional statistics; high-dimensional data analysis; and algorithms for partially identified models. There will be special quarters (fall and spring) where the Institute will bring together investigators, postdocs, and Ph.D. students to focus on one of the topics. In the following quarter (winter and summer) teams will continue research that advance the proposal topics.This project is part of the National Science Foundation's Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR) Big Idea activity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.