Dear all, On Friday, October 16, at 14h30 in Aula Dal Passo in the Math Department of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, RoMaDS (https://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~rds/events.php) will host Michaël Unser (EPFL) with the colloquium “Variational splines and stochastic processes: From kernel methods (and Norbert Wiener) to ReLU networks” Abstract: The Wiener (MMSE) estimator of a Brownian motion (a.k.a. Wiener process) from noisy samples is a linear spline. Similarly, a variational reconstruction problem with second-order total variation regularization yields an adaptive linear spline solution. Deep ReLU networks can also be interpreted as spline functions, albeit in higher-dimensional spaces. In this talk, I will show how these seemingly disparate results are unified through a common variational framework. I will further relate this perspective to stochastic modeling: kernel methods naturally correspond to Gaussian processes, while neural network approaches can be interpreted in terms of sparse stochastic processes. We encourage in-person partecipation. Should you be unable to come, here is the link to the Teams streaming: Colloquium Unser | Join meeting in Teams | Microsoft Teams <https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3869502347108563?p=AXYdezMUUlLEXbejs3> The seminar is part of the Excellence Project MatMod@TOV.