We are pleased to have Jiguo Cao from the Simon Fraser University presenting at our SFU VINCI seminar.

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Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Time: 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

Location: TASC1 9204, Burnaby campus

Zoom Link: Join via Zoom

Talk Title: Functional Partial Least Squares With Censored Outcomes: Prediction of Breast Cancer Risk With Mammogram Images

Abstract:
We consider the problem of predicting breast cancer risk using mammogram imaging data where the dimension of pixels greatly exceed the number of individuals in the cohort. The functional partial least squares (FPLS) is a popular dimensional reduction method in constructing latent explanatory components using linear combinations of the original predictor variables. While FPLS with scalar responses has been studied in the literature, the presence of right censoring under the survival framework poses challenges in modeling and estimation. Given several different representations for PLS with Cox regression in the literature, we unify and extend three formulations to deal with right censoring, that is, reweighing, mean imputation, and deviance residuals to the functional setting in this paper. We empirically investigate and compare the performance of the three proposed FPLS frameworks in the context of imaging predictor via intensive simulation studies. The proposed methods are applied to the Joanne Knight Breast Health Cohort where we show increased model discriminatory performance under the FPLS framework compared to competing models.

Biography:
Dr. Jiguo Cao is a Canada Research Chair in Data Science and Professor in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. His research spans a broad range of areas, including machine learning, functional data analysis (FDA), and sports analytics, with applications in neuroscience, public health, genetics, environmental science, and image analysis. In 2021, Dr. Cao received the CRM–SSC Prize, one of Canada’s highest national honors in statistics, jointly awarded by the Statistical Society of Canada (SSC) and the Centre de recherches mathématiques (CRM).