Research Summary
Ishanu Chattopadhyay’s research focuses on the theory of unsupervised machine learning and the interplay of stochastic processes and formal language theory in exploring the mathematical underpinnings of the question of inferring causality from data. His most visible contributions include the algorithms for data smashing, inverse Gillespie inference, and nonparametric nonlinear and zero-knowledge implementations of Granger causal analysis that have crucial implications for biomedical informatics, data-enabled discovery in biomedicine, and personalized precision health care. His current work focuses on analyzing massive clinical databases of disparate variables to distill patterns indicative of hitherto unknown etiologies, dependencies, and relationships, potentially addressing the daunting computational challenge of scale and making way for ab initio and de novo modeling in an age of ubiquitous data. Chattopadhyay received an MS and PhD in mechanical engineering, as well as an MA in mathematics, from the Pennsylvania State University. He completed his postdoctoral training and served as a research associate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State. He also held a postdoctoral fellowship simultaneously at the Department of Computer Science and the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University.