Events Calendar

USC CAIS Seminar

Speaker: Dr. Lily Xu, Oxford and Columbia University

Talk Title: Sequential planning with messy data: RL and restless bandits for planetary health

Abstract: Our planet faces growing crises including biodiversity loss, with animal population sizes declining by 70% since 1970, and maternal mortality, with 1 in 49 girls in low-income countries dying from complications in pregnancy or birth. Underlying these global challenges is the urgent need to effectively allocate scarce resources, often in dynamic environments with limited data. Many of these challenges can be modeled as restless bandits, which traditionally require a perfect model of the environment and relatively small problem sizes. We’ll explore how online learning, deep reinforcement learning, and mixed-integer programming can help overcome these challenges of missing data and complexity.
 
This lecture satisfies requirements for CSCI 591: Research Colloquium

Biography: Lily Xu develops methods across machine learning, optimization, and causal inference for planetary health challenges, with a focus on biodiversity conservation. She aims to enable practitioners to make effective decisions in the face of limited data, taking actions that are robust to uncertainty, effective at scale, and future-looking. In her work, Lily partners closely with NGOs to bridge research and practice, serving as AI Lead for the SMART Partnership. Since 2020, she has co-organized the EAAMO research initiative, committed to advancing Equity and Access in Algorithms, Mechanisms, and Optimization. Lily is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, with the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, and will join Columbia IEOR as an Assistant Professor in July 2025. Her research has been recognized with best paper runner-up at AAAI, the INFORMS Doing Good with Good OR award, a Google PhD Fellowship, a Siebel Scholarship, and AAMAS dissertation award runner-up.

Host: Bistra Dilkina

More Info: https://cais.usc.edu/events/sequential-planning-with-messy-data-rl-and-restless-bandits-for-planetary-health/

Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) - 107

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Hailey Nadel/USC CAIS

Event Link: https://cais.usc.edu/events/sequential-planning-with-messy-data-rl-and-restless-bandits-for-planetary-health/

This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.