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Postdoctoral Researcher
I am a postdoc working with Professor Patrick Rebeschini. My research focuses on machine learning theory and statistical learning, with particular emphasis on heterogeneous data settings.
I have recently been working on two main problems: (i) designing and analysing algorithms for online learning where data arrives sequentially and evolves over time; (ii) I study the training dynamics of popular machine learning architectures such as neural networks and attention mechanisms, particularly how they behave under challenging conditions like non-stationarity, contamination, and distribution shifts. I am especially interested in understanding phenomena such as benign overfitting, early stopping, and in-context learning with data heterogeneity.
I completed my PhD at Cambridge in 2024, where I was advised by Professor Ramji Venkataramanan. My PhD work centered on information theory and statistical learning, motivated by fundamental questions such as: Given a complex statistical estimation problem, what is the minimal amount of data we need to estimate the underlying signal? Can we design polynomial-time, mathematically-principled algorithms that approach the minimum?
Email: shirley.liu@stats.ox.ac.uk
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Pronouns: she/her
Learning theory
Florence Nightingale Bicentenary Research Fellow
I am a Florence Nightingale Bicentenary Research Fellow at the Department of Statistics, and Senior Demy at Magdalen College. Before arriving to Oxford, I have obtained a PhD in Probability Theory from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, and I did a postdoc at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam. My main research interests is on random graph models and random processes taking place on these networks, inspired by real-world phenomena such as disease spreading.
Email: joost.jorritsma@stats.ox.ac.uk
Office: Department of Statistics, 3.05
Pronouns: He/him/his
Groups
Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow
I completed a DPhil in Genomic Medicine and Statistics at the University of Oxford in 2024, where I applied statistical genetics to study metabolic and endocrine diseases in large-scale population biobanks such as UK Biobank. Prior to coming to Oxford, I did an undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology (with a minor in Computer Science) at Princeton University, USA.
I currently work on triangulating statistical and machine learning methods to interpret the effects of non-coding genetic variation on both molecular and systemic human phenotypes.
Email: samvida.venkatesh@stats.ox.ac.uk
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Statistical Genetics and Epidemiology
Florence Nightingale Bicentenary Fellow in Statistics
I design and analyse bandit and reinforcement learning algorithms, and develop the theoretical foundations of statistics and machine learning, particularly in the context of sequential decision-making (e.g. medical trials where continuation decisions are made adaptively).
Before this position, I worked with Csaba Szepesvári at the University of Alberta. I completed my PhD at Cambridge, supervised by José Miguel Hernández-Lobato and Zoubin Ghahramani. My career began at Oxford, where I read Engineering, Economics, and Management.
If you're considering a PhD/DPhil in machine learning theory at Oxford, feel free to email me.
Abeille, Marc, David Janz, and Ciara Pike-Burke. "When and why randomised exploration works (in linear bandits)." Outstanding Paper Award, International Conference on Algorithmic Learning Theory (2025).
Janz, David, et al. "Exploration via linearly perturbed loss minimisation." Oral Presentation, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (2024).
Lin, Jihao Andreas, et al. "Sampling from Gaussian process posteriors using stochastic gradient descent." Oral Presentation, International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (2023)
Email: david.janz@stats.ox.ac.uk
Office: 1.06