TAP Lectureships

The TAP Lectureship series features visiting theorists who are experts in one of 6 key TAP Initiative research areas: Computation and Data, Cosmology, Dynamics, Gravity, Planet Formation, and Plasma Physics. The TAP Initiatives are designed to enable interdisciplinary conversations among theorists, observers, and experimentalists on these topics.

TAP Lecturers will visit for up to two weeks and give a TAP Lecture. Our goal with these Lectureships is to bring in an external expert to spearhead conversations and collaborations. We encourage you to sign up to have relevant Lecturers join your group meetings and/or meet with you/your students/postdocs.

The TAP Program features five interdisciplinary initiatives to focus scientific discussions and advance significant proposal development efforts involving multiple scientists across Astronomy, Physics, Planetary Science, and relevant partnering departments, institutes, centers, units, and interdisciplinary programs. Several new Initiatives are anticipated to be developed in the next few years to represent better the breadth of science conducted in TAP departments and advance ongoing/future experimental, computing, and observational efforts.

The TAP Cosmology Initiative combines theory, computation, and data-driven astrophysicists to tackle some of the most pressing problems in Cosmology and Fundamental Physics, including the Nature of Dark Energy and Dark Matter, using next-generation computational simulations, codes, and observational surveys.

Initiative Leads

Peter Behroozi

Associate Professor, Department of Astronomy, & Associate Astronomer, Steward Observatory

Eduardo Rozo

Associate Professor of Physics

The TAP Computation and Data Initiative (CDI) brings together computation and data scientists with astrophysicists to push the forefront of and accelerate discovery in theoretical astrophysics. The Initiative provides a platform for researchers from different disciplines to collaborate, share resources, develop new methods, and apply them to significant problems. It also trains students to become the new generation of “computation native” scientists.

Initiative Leads

CK Chan

Assistant Research Professor/Data Science Institute Fellow, Steward Observatory

Ann Zabludoff

Professor, Astronomy

The TAP Dynamics Initiative brings together dynamicists to tackle fundamental problems in dynamics across a vast range of physical scales, from the motions of dark matter particles in galactic halos, to the dynamics of planetary and stellar bodies, all the way to galactic collisions.

Initiative Leads

Kate Daniel

Associate Professor of Astronomy

Kaitlin Kratter

Professor of Astronomy

Renu Malhotra

Professor, Planetary Sciences

The TAP Gravity Initiative brings together researchers from astronomy and physics to study the fundamental laws of gravity and their manifestation in the observable universe, primarily in the extreme environments of black holes and neutron stars. Our members perform theoretical, computational, and observational studies of these extreme physical systems.

Initiative Leads

	Sam Gralla Associate Professor of Physics
	Vasileios Paschalidis Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Physics

The TAP Planet Formation Initiative studies theories of the formation and evolution of the Solar System and exoplanet systems.

Initiative Leads

Andrew Youdin, TAP Deputy Chair

Associate Professor, Department of Astronomy & Associate Astronomer, Steward Observatory

Erik Asphaug

Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, Professor

The TAP Plasma Physics Initiative (PPI) uses theory and numerical simulation, combined with remote and in situ observations of space and astrophysical plasmas, to constrain fundamental questions about how energy, mass, and momentum are injected into, transported through, and removed from a wide variety of plasma systems throughout the Universe.

Initiative Lead

Joe Giacalone

Professor, Planetary Sciences

Kris Klein

Assistant Professor, Planetary Sciences

Shuo Kong

Assistant Professor, Astronomy

TAP Lecturers

The schedule of Lecturers includes links to their individual google sheet schedules so that you can sign up directly.

Spring 2025 Speakers

Xianzhe Jia, University of Michigan

Visit Dates: March 3 – 6, 2025

Plasma Physics Initiative Lecture:

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Kuiper Space Sciences Building, Room 312

3:30-4:30 pm with refreshments served at 3:00 pm in the 3rd floor atrium

Daniel Tamayo, Harvey Mudd College

Visit Dates: March 16 – 20, 2025

Dynamics Initiative Lecture:

Monday, March 17, 2025

Kuiper Space Sciences Building, Room 312

3:30 – 4:30 pm with refreshments served at 3:00 pm in the 3rd floor atrium

Yixin Wang, University of Michigan

Visit Dates: April 2 – 10, 2025

Computation & Data Initiative Lecture:

Friday, April 4, 2025

1:30 – 2:30 pm in Kuiper Space Sciences Building, Room 312

Refreshments served at 1:00 pm in the 3rd floor atrium

Title: Representation Learning: A causal perspective

Abstract: Representation learning constructs low-dimensional representations to summarize essential features of high-dimensional data like images and texts. Ideally, such a representation should eliciently capture non-spurious features of the data. It shall also be disentangled so that we can interpret what feature each of its dimensions captures. However, these desiderata are often intuitively defined and challenging to quantify or enforce.

In this talk, we take on a causal perspective of representation learning. We show how desiderata of representation learning can be formalized using counterfactual notions, enabling metrics and algorithms that target elicient, non-spurious, and disentangled representations of data. We discuss the theoretical underpinnings of the algorithm and illustrate its empirical performance in both supervised and unsupervised representation learning.

This is joint work with Michael Jordan, Kartik Ahuja, Divyat Mahajan, and Yoshua Bengio.

Bio: Yixin Wang is an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Michigan. She works in the fields of Bayesian statistics, machine learning, and causal inference. Previously, she was a postdoctoral
researcher with Professor Michael Jordan at the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her PhD in statistics at Columbia, advised by Professor David Blei, and her undergraduate studies in
mathematics and computer science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Her research has been recognized by the j-ISBA Blackwell-Rosenbluth Award, ICSA Conference Young Researcher Award, ISBA Savage Award Honorable Mention, ACIC Tom Ten Have Award Honorable Mention, and INFORMS data mining and COPA best paper awards.

Related Publications:

Y. Wang and M.I. Jordan. Desiderata for Representation Learning: A Causal Perspective. Journal of Machine Learning Research, 2024.

K. Ahuja, D. Mahajan, Y. Wang, and Y Bengio. Interventional Causal Representation Learning. ICML 2023 (Oral).

K. Ahuja, A. Mansouri, and Y. Wang. Multi-Domain Causal Representation

K. Ahuja, A. Mansouri, and Y. Wang. Multi-Domain Causal Representation Learning via Weak Distributional Invariances. AISTATS 2024.

Fred Adams, University of Michigan

Visit Dates: April 20 – 27, 2025

Joint Origins Seminar / Planet Formation Lecture:

Monday, April 21, 2025

12:00 – 1:00 pm – Location: TBA

Planet Formation Initiative Lecture:

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

2:30 – 3:30 pm in Kuiper Space Sciences, Room 312

Refreshments served at 2:00 pm in the 3rd Floor Atrium

Born in Redwood City, California, Fred Adams graduated from Iowa State University in 1983 with a BS in Physics and Mathematics. He went on to receive his PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley (in 1988), where his dissertation received the Robert J. Trumpler Award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. After serving as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Adams joined the faculty in the Physics Department at the University of Michigan in 1991. Adams was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996, and to Full Professor in 2001. He is the recipient of the Helen B. Warner Prize from the American Astronomical Society and the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award. At the University of Michigan, he has been awarded the Excellence in Education Award, the Excellence in Research Award, the Faculty Recognition Award, and was elected to the Michigan Society of Fellows. Adams was subsequently elected to be a fellow of the American Physical Society, fellow of the American Astronomical Society, and Chair of the AAS Division on Dynamical Astronomy. He was named as the Ta-You Wu Collegiate Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan, and is currently the director of the Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics.

Professor Adams works in the general area of theoretical astrophysics with a focus on the study of star formation, exoplanets, and cosmology. He is internationally recognized for his work on the radiative signature of the star formation process, the dynamics of circumstellar disks, the development of a theory for the initial mass function, and studies of extra-solar planetary systems. In cosmology, he has studied the inflationary universe, magnetic monopoles, cosmic rays, and cosmic background radiation fields. His work in cosmology also includes explorations of the long term fate and evolution of the universe, as well as a re-examination of its degree of fine-tuning.

Author of “The Five Ages of the Universe”