UPSTAT 2024

UPSTAT 2024

Statistical Science at a Crossroads: 
How AI is changing the practice & methodology

Join us April 12-13, 2024!


The UPSTAT Conference series, now in its 12th year, has become the flagship Statistics Conference of the Upstate New York Chapters of the ASA. This year, we are excited to invite all statisticians, mathematicians, computer scientists, software engineers, data scientists, data analysts, and artificial intelligence enthusiasts to join us on the beautiful campus of RIT.

Thank you all for yet another wonderful conference! We look forward to welcoming you back in 2025!

You can find a list of our student winners here:

Student Awards     

 

The organizing committee for UPSTAT 2024 invites you to participate in our annual gathering of local statisticians, future statisticians, data analysts, and data fanatics in general! Registration is open and we are now accepting submissions for the parallel talks and poster sessions from professionals, faculty, postdocs and students of all levels. This year’s theme asks us to examine the ways that AI has permeated our field and changed the way we approach problems, though we welcome submissions on any statistical topic.

Student (graduate AND undergraduate) presentations will be eligible for awards in each of the application, methodology, and education categories.

New student opportunity this year! The top three teams from DataFest 2024 at RIT will be invited to present their work!

DataFest 2024 registration information here: https://www.rit.edu/science/datafest

Questions? You may reach out to the program chair : rochesterasa {at} gmail.com

Location, Dates & Schedule

Location: RIT Campus
Dates: April 12-13, 2024


Friday, 4/12

  • Registration Table Opens 3pm
  • Welcome 3:30-4:00  pm
  • Tutorials and Short Courses (Parallel) from 4:00-7:00 pm 
  • Cocktail Hour + Musical Entertainment + Poster Session, 7:00-8:00 pm (Posters displayed to be assessed)
  • Panel Discussion 8:00-9:30pm


Saturday, 4/13

  • Welcome and Breakfast 8:30-9:00 am
  • Parallel Talks - 1 from 9:00-9:55 am
  • Parallel Talks - 2 from 10:00-10:55 am
  • Parallel Talks - 3 from 11:00-11:55 am
  • Lunch 12-1pm (Posters displayed and visible for assessment)
  • Parallel Talks - 4 from 1:15-2:15 pm
  • Parallel Talks - 5 from 2:30-3:25 pm
  • Data Competition Presentation, 3:30-4:00 pm
  • Break and Assessment by judges from 4:00-4:30 pm
  • Awards & Closing Remarks, 4:30-5pm

Submit an abstract

Submissions open: February 19, 2024

Early bird submissions close: March 15, 2024

Late bird submissions close: April 1, 2024

Acceptance notifications starting: Monday, March 18, 2024

Conference: Friday April 12, 2024 - Saturday April 13, 2024

Presenters are expected to register for the conference. Accepted student presenters will receive a discount code to register for FREE in their abstract acceptance notification.

Full Schedule     

Poster Abstracts       Tutorial Abstracts      Parallel Talk Abstracts     

Registration & Fees

  • $60 non-member two-day ticket
  • $40 ASA member two-day ticket
  • $25 student, AP Stats Teacher and 2YC instructor two-day ticket
  • Free student presenter ticket (submit an abstract before you register)

TWO-DAY TICKETS: Include Friday and Saturday with breakfast and lunch

Registration on Eventbrite

Location & Directions

From the NYS Thruway
Take Exit 46. Immediately after exiting, get on I-390 North and refer to directions below.

From I-390 (Northbound)
Take Exit 13 (Hylan Drive). Turn left onto Hylan Dr. and continue north to Jefferson Road (Route 252), and turn left at the light. Proceed west a short distance to the main campus. Turn left onto campus, just past the Radisson Inn, via Lowenthal Road (the first entrance onto campus from this direction).

After entering campus
Parking will be in Lot S, on the back side of campus. As you enter RIT’s main entrance off of Jefferson Road, take the 2nd exit into a smaller traffic circle and then take a right onto Ezra and Betsy Memorial Drive. Take that road around to the back side of campus and take a left onto Ralph Tyler Drive. Lot S will be on the right.

Friday after 5pm and Saturday parking in Lot S is free. On Friday before 5pm, you may stop at the visitor welcome center in the 2nd small traffic circle to get a visitor pass.

Max Lowenthal Hall (LOW) to the right of Lot S highlighted in the photo.

An interactive map can be found here: https://maps.rit.edu/

 

Tutorials, All on Friday 4/12 - Click Here for Abstracts!

4:00 - 5:00pm    

T1A: Introduction to Causal Inference

Teresa Gibson, PhD, Professor of Practice, School of Mathematics & Statistics, Rochester Institute of Technology
Level: Basic to intermediate

T1B: Websites/Webservers & Web Graphics for Beginners

Gregory Babbitt, PhD, Associate Professor, Gosnell School of Life Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology
Level: Basic

T1C:   A Gentle Introduction to Diffusion Models in Machine Learning (Part 1)

Zi-Jia Gong, Graduate Student, School of Mathematics & Statistics, Rochester Institute of Technology
Level: Basic to Intermediate

 

5:00 - 6:00pm

T2A: Community Detection in Complex Networks

Nishant Malik, PhD, Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics & Statistics, Rochester Institute of Technology
Level: Basic

T2B: Introduction to Basic Bioinformatics Concepts & Databases for Beginners

Gregory Babbitt, PhD, Associate Professor, Gosnell School of Life Sciences, Rochester Institute of Technology
Level: Basic

T2C: A Gentle Introduction to Diffusion Models in Machine Learning (Part 2) 

Zi-Jia Gong, Graduate Student, School of Mathematics & Statistics, Rochester Institute of Technology
Level: Basic to Intermediate

T2D: Demystifying Tiny GPT: Hands-On Training with PyTorch (Part 1) Canceled

Bardh Rushiti, Co-founder @ AI Kosovo, Computer Vision & AI Engineer @ Calvary Robotics
Level: Intermediate

 

6:00 - 7:00pm

T3A: AntiCopyPaster: An Open-Source Ecosystem for Just-in-time Code Duplicates Extraction

Mohamed Wiem Mkaouer, PhD, Assistant Professor, Software Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology
Level: 

T3B: An Introduction to the Conformal Prediction Approach to Uncertainty Quantification

Ernest Fokoue, PhD, Professor, School of Mathematics & Statistics, Rochester Institute of Technology
Level: Intermediate

T3C: Introduction to Research Computing at RIT 

Benjamin Meyers, PhD, Research Computing, Rochester Institute of Technology
Level: Intermediate

T3D: Demystifying Tiny GPT: Hands-On Training with PyTorch (Part 2) Canceled

Bardh Rushiti, Co-founder @ AI Kosovo, Computer Vision & AI Engineer @ Calvary Robotics
Level: Intermediate

    Invited Sessions - Click Here for more details - All on Saturday

    I1: Federated Learning with Data Quality and Security Evaluated OR How to Make Distributed Machine Learning Work in Real-Life? - Organizer: Sergei Chuprov, RIT

    I2: An exploration of AI assisted research in Criminal Justice - Organizers: John McCluskey and Irshad Altheimer, RIT

    I3: Subsampling and Network Analysis - Organizer: Marianthi Markatou, PhD, University at Buffalo

    I4: Accelerating Science with High-Performance Computing - Organizer: Benjamin Meyers, PhD, RIT

    I5: Network Analysis - Organizer: Marianthi Markatou, PhD, University at Buffalo

    Sponsors

    rit college of science

    The UPSTAT Conference series team is forever grateful to all the generous sponsors who have support the conference over the years. It would be impossible to properly run a high quality conference without the support of our sponsors. 

    Conference Committee

    Organizing Committee
    • Kathy Grzesik
    • Trijya Singh
    • Gregory Babbitt
    • Tony Wong
    • Tanzy Love
    • Ernest Fokoue
    • Marianthi Markatou
    Conference Program Chair
    • Kathy Grzesik
    Awards Committee
    • Gregory Babbitt
    Data Competition Committee
    • Ernest Fokoue
    Financial Committee
    • Tony Wong
    Students Focus Committee
    • Zijia Gong
    Publicity and Outreach Committee (OnSite, Online)
    • Trijya Singh
    Web Committee
    • John-Paul Takats

    History

    Since its inception in 2012, the UP STAT conference series has uninterruptedly gathered the most eager practicing statisticians and data scientists of our beautiful upstate New York region every single year. Thanks to the remarkable and commendable commitment of statistical practitioners and faculty members along with their dedicated students from Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Rochester, St John Fisher College, Canisius College, SUNY Geneseo, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Buffalo State, SUNY Fredonia, SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Oneonta, SUNY Oswego, SUNY Albany, Niagara University, Syracuse University, St Bonaventure College, SUNY Brockport, City University of New York (CUNY) and Cornell University. The conference has occasionally welcomed participants from as far as Carnegie Mellon University. The UP STAT conference series has become the annual gathering forum for all the statisticians and data scientists of upstate New York. With very little means, we have harnessed the talents of our volunteer organizing committee members to build the UP-STAT conference series into a very promising vehicle for cutting edge Statistical and Data Science education in our Upstate New York region.