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David M. J. Tax

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Published work

11 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Accelerated and data-efficient flow prediction in stirred tanks via physics-informed learning

The simulation of fluid flows is computationally expensive due to the complexity of its governing partial differential equations. Machine learning models offer a potential surrogate, enabling learning from simulations and significantly faster predictions of flow fields. However, these models require large training datasets, which introduces a trade-off between dataset generation cost and predictive accuracy. In this work, we investigate the relationship between the size of the training-set and accuracy of the prediction when learning steady flow fields in an industrial-scale stirred vessel. A data set of steady flows is generated using Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (RANS) simulations in a range of realistic operating conditions, including impeller speeds and liquid heights. We train implicit neural representations of flow fields and compare purely data-driven and constrained variants. Model performance is evaluated using global mean squared error (MSE), qualitative spatial comparisons of predicted and reference flow fields, and tracer transport simulations. We find that the prediction error decreases monotonically with increasing training data, but also that it exhibits clear diminishing returns beyond moderate dataset sizes. Physics-based constraints significantly improve accuracy and reduce variability across training runs in low-data regimes, and they lead to more stable tracer-transport behavior. Furthermore, reasonable interpolation can be achieved over different impeller speeds and liquid heights. However, these benefits come with an increase in the complexity of training, and their relative advantage diminishes as the training set grows.

preprint2023arXiv

Continual Prune-and-Select: Class-incremental learning with specialized subnetworks

The human brain is capable of learning tasks sequentially mostly without forgetting. However, deep neural networks (DNNs) suffer from catastrophic forgetting when learning one task after another. We address this challenge considering a class-incremental learning scenario where the DNN sees test data without knowing the task from which this data originates. During training, Continual-Prune-and-Select (CP&S) finds a subnetwork within the DNN that is responsible for solving a given task. Then, during inference, CP&S selects the correct subnetwork to make predictions for that task. A new task is learned by training available neuronal connections of the DNN (previously untrained) to create a new subnetwork by pruning, which can include previously trained connections belonging to other subnetwork(s) because it does not update shared connections. This enables to eliminate catastrophic forgetting by creating specialized regions in the DNN that do not conflict with each other while still allowing knowledge transfer across them. The CP&S strategy is implemented with different subnetwork selection strategies, revealing superior performance to state-of-the-art continual learning methods tested on various datasets (CIFAR-100, CUB-200-2011, ImageNet-100 and ImageNet-1000). In particular, CP&S is capable of sequentially learning 10 tasks from ImageNet-1000 keeping an accuracy around 94% with negligible forgetting, a first-of-its-kind result in class-incremental learning. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this represents an improvement in accuracy above 10% when compared to the best alternative method.

preprint2022arXiv

Conversation Group Detection With Spatio-Temporal Context

In this work, we propose an approach for detecting conversation groups in social scenarios like cocktail parties and networking events, from overhead camera recordings. We posit the detection of conversation groups as a learning problem that could benefit from leveraging the spatial context of the surroundings, and the inherent temporal context in interpersonal dynamics which is reflected in the temporal dynamics in human behavior signals, an aspect that has not been addressed in recent prior works. This motivates our approach which consists of a dynamic LSTM-based deep learning model that predicts continuous pairwise affinity values indicating how likely two people are in the same conversation group. These affinity values are also continuous in time, since relationships and group membership do not occur instantaneously, even though the ground truths of group membership are binary. Using the predicted affinity values, we apply a graph clustering method based on Dominant Set extraction to identify the conversation groups. We benchmark the proposed method against established methods on multiple social interaction datasets. Our results showed that the proposed method improves group detection performance in data that has more temporal granularity in conversation group labels. Additionally, we provide an analysis in the predicted affinity values in relation to the conversation group detection. Finally, we demonstrate the usability of the predicted affinity values in a forecasting framework to predict group membership for a given forecast horizon.

preprint2020arXiv

A Brief Prehistory of Double Descent

In their thought-provoking paper [1], Belkin et al. illustrate and discuss the shape of risk curves in the context of modern high-complexity learners. Given a fixed training sample size $n$, such curves show the risk of a learner as a function of some (approximate) measure of its complexity $N$. With $N$ the number of features, these curves are also referred to as feature curves. A salient observation in [1] is that these curves can display, what they call, double descent: with increasing $N$, the risk initially decreases, attains a minimum, and then increases until $N$ equals $n$, where the training data is fitted perfectly. Increasing $N$ even further, the risk decreases a second and final time, creating a peak at $N=n$. This twofold descent may come as a surprise, but as opposed to what [1] reports, it has not been overlooked historically. Our letter draws attention to some original, earlier findings, of interest to contemporary machine learning.

preprint2016arXiv

Modeling Time Series Similarity with Siamese Recurrent Networks

Traditional techniques for measuring similarities between time series are based on handcrafted similarity measures, whereas more recent learning-based approaches cannot exploit external supervision. We combine ideas from time-series modeling and metric learning, and study siamese recurrent networks (SRNs) that minimize a classification loss to learn a good similarity measure between time series. Specifically, our approach learns a vectorial representation for each time series in such a way that similar time series are modeled by similar representations, and dissimilar time series by dissimilar representations. Because it is a similarity prediction models, SRNs are particularly well-suited to challenging scenarios such as signature recognition, in which each person is a separate class and very few examples per class are available. We demonstrate the potential merits of SRNs in within-domain and out-of-domain classification experiments and in one-shot learning experiments on tasks such as signature, voice, and sign language recognition.

preprint2016arXiv

Survey on the attention based RNN model and its applications in computer vision

The recurrent neural networks (RNN) can be used to solve the sequence to sequence problem, where both the input and the output have sequential structures. Usually there are some implicit relations between the structures. However, it is hard for the common RNN model to fully explore the relations between the sequences. In this survey, we introduce some attention based RNN models which can focus on different parts of the input for each output item, in order to explore and take advantage of the implicit relations between the input and the output items. The different attention mechanisms are described in detail. We then introduce some applications in computer vision which apply the attention based RNN models. The superiority of the attention based RNN model is shown by the experimental results. At last some future research directions are given.

preprint2016arXiv

Time Series Classification using the Hidden-Unit Logistic Model

We present a new model for time series classification, called the hidden-unit logistic model, that uses binary stochastic hidden units to model latent structure in the data. The hidden units are connected in a chain structure that models temporal dependencies in the data. Compared to the prior models for time series classification such as the hidden conditional random field, our model can model very complex decision boundaries because the number of latent states grows exponentially with the number of hidden units. We demonstrate the strong performance of our model in experiments on a variety of (computer vision) tasks, including handwritten character recognition, speech recognition, facial expression, and action recognition. We also present a state-of-the-art system for facial action unit detection based on the hidden-unit logistic model.

preprint2014arXiv

Dissimilarity-based Ensembles for Multiple Instance Learning

In multiple instance learning, objects are sets (bags) of feature vectors (instances) rather than individual feature vectors. In this paper we address the problem of how these bags can best be represented. Two standard approaches are to use (dis)similarities between bags and prototype bags, or between bags and prototype instances. The first approach results in a relatively low-dimensional representation determined by the number of training bags, while the second approach results in a relatively high-dimensional representation, determined by the total number of instances in the training set. In this paper a third, intermediate approach is proposed, which links the two approaches and combines their strengths. Our classifier is inspired by a random subspace ensemble, and considers subspaces of the dissimilarity space, defined by subsets of instances, as prototypes. We provide guidelines for using such an ensemble, and show state-of-the-art performances on a range of multiple instance learning problems.

preprint2014arXiv

Multiple Instance Learning with Bag Dissimilarities

Multiple instance learning (MIL) is concerned with learning from sets (bags) of objects (instances), where the individual instance labels are ambiguous. In this setting, supervised learning cannot be applied directly. Often, specialized MIL methods learn by making additional assumptions about the relationship of the bag labels and instance labels. Such assumptions may fit a particular dataset, but do not generalize to the whole range of MIL problems. Other MIL methods shift the focus of assumptions from the labels to the overall (dis)similarity of bags, and therefore learn from bags directly. We propose to represent each bag by a vector of its dissimilarities to other bags in the training set, and treat these dissimilarities as a feature representation. We show several alternatives to define a dissimilarity between bags and discuss which definitions are more suitable for particular MIL problems. The experimental results show that the proposed approach is computationally inexpensive, yet very competitive with state-of-the-art algorithms on a wide range of MIL datasets.

preprint2014arXiv

On Classification with Bags, Groups and Sets

Many classification problems can be difficult to formulate directly in terms of the traditional supervised setting, where both training and test samples are individual feature vectors. There are cases in which samples are better described by sets of feature vectors, that labels are only available for sets rather than individual samples, or, if individual labels are available, that these are not independent. To better deal with such problems, several extensions of supervised learning have been proposed, where either training and/or test objects are sets of feature vectors. However, having been proposed rather independently of each other, their mutual similarities and differences have hitherto not been mapped out. In this work, we provide an overview of such learning scenarios, propose a taxonomy to illustrate the relationships between them, and discuss directions for further research in these areas.

preprint2014arXiv

Quantile Representation for Indirect Immunofluorescence Image Classification

In the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases, an important task is to classify images of slides containing several HEp-2 cells. All cells from one slide share the same label, and by classifying cells from one slide independently, some information on the global image quality and intensity is lost. Considering one whole slide as a collection (a bag) of feature vectors, however, poses the problem of how to handle this bag. A simple, and surprisingly effective, approach is to summarize the bag of feature vectors by a few quantile values per feature. This characterizes the full distribution of all instances, thereby assuming that all instances in a bag are informative. This representation is particularly useful when each bag contains many feature vectors, which is the case in the classification of the immunofluorescence images. Experiments on the classification of indirect immunofluorescence images show the usefulness of this approach.