Guy Wolf

Biography

Guy Wolf is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Université de Montréal.

His research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, data science and applied mathematics. He is particularly interested in data mining methods that use manifold learning and deep geometric learning, as well as applications for the exploratory analysis of biomedical data.

Wolf’s research focuses on exploratory data analysis and its applications in bioinformatics. His approaches are multidisciplinary and bring together machine learning, signal processing and applied math tools. His recent work has used a combination of diffusion geometries and deep learning to find emergent patterns, dynamics, and structure in big high dimensional- data (e.g., in single-cell genomics and proteomics).

Current Students

Ria Arora

Master's Research - Université de Montréal

Co-supervisor :

Liam Paull

Adrien Aumon

PhD - Université de Montréal

Semih Cantürk

PhD - Université de Montréal

semihcanturk00@gmail.com

Collaborating Alumni

Enrique Fita Sanmartin

Collaborating Alumni - Université de Montréal

Kameron Harris

Collaborating researcher - Western Washington University (faculty; assistant prof))

Co-supervisor :

PhD - Université de Montréal

Will Hua

Collaborating Alumni - McGill University

Xiaolong Huang

Master's Research - Concordia University

Principal supervisor :

Guillaume Huguet

PhD - Université de Montréal

Paul Janson

PhD - Concordia University

Principal supervisor :

Charles-Etienne Joseph

Master's Research - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

M. Elyes Kanoun

Research Intern - Université de Montréal

Vincent Létourneau

Postdoctorate - Université de Montréal

Myriam Lizotte

PhD - Université de Montréal

Philippe Martin

PhD - Université de Montréal

Co-supervisor :

Paul François

Paria Mehrbod

Master's Research - Concordia University

Principal supervisor :

Lydia Mezrag

PhD - Université de Montréal

Sacha Morin

PhD - Université de Montréal

Co-supervisor :

Postdoctorate - Concordia University

Principal supervisor :

geraldin.nanfack@mila.quebec

Amine Natik

PhD - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Guillaume Lajoie

Shuang Ni

PhD - Université de Montréal

Albert Orozco Camacho

PhD - Concordia University

Principal supervisor :

Master's Research - Université de Montréal

Matthew Scicluna

PhD - Université de Montréal

Principal supervisor :

Collaborating researcher - Université de Montréal

Co-supervisor :

PhD - Université de Montréal

Research Intern - Western Washington University

Principal supervisor :

Postdoctorate - Université de Montréal

stephanie.zandee@mcgill.ca

Stephanie Zandee

Collaborating researcher - McGill University (assistant professor)

Exploring the COVID-19 Interferon Paradox with Dimensionality Reduction and Clustering

Blog Posts

Graph and representation of working methodology, and graph of data on deaths 60 days after onset of symptoms.

February 19, 2025

Sacha Morin

Elsa Brunet-Ratnasingham

Guy Wolf

Read the article

Publications

Identifying Critical Neurons in ANN Architectures using Mixed Integer Programming

Mostafa ElAraby

Margarida Carvalho

2023-05-23

Integration of Constraint Programming, Artificial Intelligence, and Operations Research (published)

Data Imputation with an Autoencoder and MAGIC

Devin Eddington

Andres Felipe Duque Correa

Kevin R. Moon

Missing data is a common problem in many applications. Imputing missing values is a challenging task, as the imputations need to be accurate… (see more) and robust to avoid introducing bias in downstream analysis. In this paper, we propose an ensemble method that combines the strengths of a manifold learning-based imputation method called MAGIC and an autoencoder deep learning model. We call our method Deep MAGIC. Deep MAGIC is trained on a linear combination of the mean squared error of the original data and the mean squared error of the MAGIC-imputed data. Experimental results on three benchmark datasets show that Deep MAGIC outperforms several state-of-the-art imputation methods, demonstrating its effectiveness and robustness in handling large amounts of missing data.

2023-05-21

SampTA/2023/Conference (published)

Graph Fourier MMD for Signals on Graphs

Samuel Leone

Aarthi Venkat

Guillaume Huguet

Alexander Tong

While numerous methods have been proposed for computing distances between probability distributions in Euclidean space, relatively little at… (see more)tention has been given to computing such distances for distributions on graphs. However, there has been a marked increase in data that either lies on graph (such as protein interaction networks) or can be modeled as a graph (single cell data), particularly in the biomedical sciences. Thus, it becomes important to find ways to compare signals defined on such graphs. Here, we propose Graph Fourier MMD (GFMMD), a novel distance between distributions and signals on graphs. GFMMD is defined via an optimal witness function that is both smooth on the graph and maximizes the difference in expectation between the pair of distributions on the graph. We find an analytical solution to this optimization problem as well as an embedding of distributions that results from this method. We also prove several properties of this method including scale invariance and applicability to disconnected graphs. We showcase it on graph benchmark datasets as well on single cell RNA-sequencing data analysis. In the latter, we use the GFMMD-based gene embeddings to find meaningful gene clusters. We also propose a novel type of score for gene selection called gene localization score which helps select genes for cellular state space characterization.

2023-05-21

SampTA/2023/Conference (published)

Manifold Alignment with Label Information

Andres F. Duque Correa

Myriam Lizotte

Kevin R. Moon

Multi-domain data is becoming increasingly common and presents both challenges and opportunities in the data science community. The integrat… (see more)ion of distinct data-views can be used for exploratory data analysis, and benefit downstream analysis including machine learning related tasks. With this in mind, we present a novel manifold alignment method called MALI (Manifold alignment with label information) that learns a correspondence between two distinct domains. MALI belongs to a middle ground between the more commonly addressed semi-supervised manifold alignment, where some known correspondences between the two domains are assumed to be known beforehand, and the purely unsupervised case, where no information linking both domains is available. To do this, MALI learns the manifold structure in both domains via a diffusion process and then leverages discrete class labels to guide the alignment. MALI recovers a pairing and a common representation that reveals related samples in both domains. We show that MALI outperforms the current state-of-the-art manifold alignment methods across multiple datasets.

2023-05-21

SampTA/2023/Conference (published)

Single-cell analysis reveals inflammatory interactions driving macular degeneration

Manik Kuchroo

Marcello DiStasio

Eric Song

Eda Calapkulu

Le Zhang

Maryam Ige

Amar H. Sheth

Abdelilah Majdoubi

Madhvi Menon

Alexander Tong

Abhinav Godavarthi

Yu Xing

Scott Gigante

Holly Steach

Jessie Huang

Je-chun Huang

Guillaume Huguet

Janhavi Narain

Kisung You

George Mourgkos … (see 6 more)

Rahul M. Dhodapkar

Matthew Hirn

Bastian Rieck

Brian P. Hafler

2023-05-05

Nature Communications (published)

Neural FIM for learning Fisher Information Metrics from point cloud data

Oluwadamilola Fasina

Guillaume Huguet

Alexander Tong

Yanlei Zhang

Maximilian Nickel

Ian Adelstein

Although data diffusion embeddings are ubiquitous in unsupervised learning and have proven to be a viable technique for uncovering the under… (see more)lying intrinsic geometry of data, diffusion embeddings are inherently limited due to their discrete nature. To this end, we propose neural FIM, a method for computing the Fisher information metric (FIM) from point cloud data - allowing for a continuous manifold model for the data. Neural FIM creates an extensible metric space from discrete point cloud data such that information from the metric can inform us of manifold characteristics such as volume and geodesics. We demonstrate Neural FIM's utility in selecting parameters for the PHATE visualization method as well as its ability to obtain information pertaining to local volume illuminating branching points and cluster centers embeddings of a toy dataset and two single-cell datasets of IPSC reprogramming and PBMCs (immune cells).

2023-04-24

ICML.cc/2023/Conference (poster)

Multi-view manifold learning of human brain state trajectories

Erica Lindsey Busch

Je-chun Huang

Andrew Benz

Tom Wallenstein

Guillaume Lajoie

Nicholas Turk-Browne

2023-03-27

Nature Computational Science (published)

Graph Fourier MMD for signals on data graphs

Samuel Leone

Alexander Tong

Guillaume Huguet

While numerous methods have been proposed for computing distances between probability distributions in Euclidean space, relatively little at… (see more)tention has been given to computing such distances for distributions on graphs. However, there has been a marked increase in data that either lies on graph (such as protein interaction networks) or can be modeled as a graph (single cell data), particularly in the biomedical sciences. Thus, it becomes important to find ways to compare signals defined on such graphs. Here, we propose Graph Fourier MMD (GFMMD), a novel a distance between distributions, or non-negative signals on graphs. GFMMD is defined via an optimal witness function that is both smooth on the graph and maximizes difference in expectation between the pair of distributions on the graph. We find an analytical solution to this optimization problem as well as an embedding of distributions that results from this method. We also prove several properties of this method including scale invariance and applicability to disconnected graphs. We showcase it on graph benchmark datasets as well on single cell RNA-sequencing data analysis. In the latter, we use the GFMMD-based gene embeddings to find meaningful gene clusters. We also propose a novel type of score for gene selection called {\em gene localization score} which helps select genes for cellular state space characterization.

2023-02-01

ICLR.cc/2023/Conference (rejected)

Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport

Alexander Tong

Nikolay Malkin

Guillaume Huguet

Yanlei Zhang

Jarrid Rector-Brooks

Kilian FATRAS

Continuous normalizing flows (CNFs) are an attractive generative modeling technique, but they have been held back by limitations in their si… (see more)mulation-based maximum likelihood training. We introduce the generalized conditional flow matching (CFM) technique, a family of simulation-free training objectives for CNFs. CFM features a stable regression objective like that used to train the stochastic flow in diffusion models but enjoys the efficient inference of deterministic flow models. In contrast to both diffusion models and prior CNF training algorithms, CFM does not require the source distribution to be Gaussian or require evaluation of its density. A variant of our objective is optimal transport CFM (OT-CFM), which creates simpler flows that are more stable to train and lead to faster inference, as evaluated in our experiments. Furthermore, we show that when the true OT plan is available, our OT-CFM method approximates dynamic OT. Training CNFs with CFM improves results on a variety of conditional and unconditional generation tasks, such as inferring single cell dynamics, unsupervised image translation, and Schr\"odinger bridge inference.

2023-02-01

ArXiv (preprint)

Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport

Alexander Tong

Nikolay Malkin

Guillaume Huguet

Yanlei Zhang

Jarrid Rector-Brooks

Kilian FATRAS

2023-02-01

ArXiv (preprint)

Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport

Alexander Tong

Nikolay Malkin

Guillaume Huguet

Yanlei Zhang

Jarrid Rector-Brooks

Kilian FATRAS

2023-02-01

ArXiv (preprint)

Improving and generalizing flow-based generative models with minibatch optimal transport

Alexander Tong

Nikolay Malkin

Guillaume Huguet

Yanlei Zhang

Jarrid Rector-Brooks

Kilian FATRAS

2023-02-01

ArXiv (preprint)