Particle Swarm Optimization as a general-purpose optimization tool

Presented by Weng Kee Wong, Professor of Biostatistics, University of California at Los Angeles

Wednesday, October 23, 2024, 4:00 PM, AUST 202

Webex Meeting Link
Coffee will be served at 3:30 pm in the Noether Lounge (AUST 326)

Abstract: Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm is based on swarm intelligence and widely used in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Like many other nature-inspired metaheuristic algorithms, it is already widely used to tackle all sorts of hard optimization problems across disciplines, particularly in engineering and computer science. Interestingly, it is less used in the statistical sciences. Their meteoric rise in popularity is due to their ease of use, speed, availability of codes across different platforms and above all, their apparent lack of technical assumptions for them to work reasonably well. I focus on an exemplary algorithm PSO and, as examples, present some of the recent applications of PSO to find challenging optimal designs in the biomedical sciences. They include extensions of Simon’s two-stage designs to multiple stages, and theory-based dose response designs for estimating the optimal biological dose in early phase clinical trials. If time permits, I will also discuss PSO variants and design strategies for problems with multiple objectives.
Bio: Professor Wong has been a faculty member at the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA since 1990. His early work includes rheumatology (scleroderma, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis), dentistry, environmental health science, cancer control and prevention, and intervention trials to fight obesity. His main methodological work is in finding efficient designs for the biomedical sciences. He has received multiple NIH grant awards, including serving as PI on several of them. He has given about 250 scientific presentations worldwide, including a recent 1-week short course at the Centre of Toxicology Center in Dortmund Technical University, Germany, and as an invited speaker, at the 16th Annual Conference on Statistical Issues in Clinical Trials, University of Pennsylvania, and at the 45th Annual Meeting of the Society of Clinical Trials. Prof. Wong is a fellow of the American Statistical Society, the Institute of the Mathematical Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Elected Member of International Statistical Institute and a full member of the Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society. He currently holds a Yushan Scholarship Award from the Ministry of Education in Taiwan.