Boris Hanin

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor at Princeton ORFE working on deep learning, probability, and spectral asymptotics. Prior to Princeton, I was an Assistant Professor in Mathematics at Texas A&M, an NSF Postdoc at MIT Math, and a PhD student in Math at Northwestern, where I was supervised by Steve Zelditch.

Funding: I am grateful to be supported by an NSF CAREER grant DMS-2143754 and NSF grants DMS-1855684, DMS-2133806. I am also a consultant for an ONR MURI on Foundations of Deep Learning.

Please see my CV for more information.

Email: bhanin ‘at’ princeton.edu

News

• Together with Jacob Foster (Sociology, UCLA), Jessica Flack (Collective Computation Group, Santa Fe Institute), Josh Tenenbaum (Brain and Cognitive Science, MIT), Max Kleiman-Weiner (Common Sense Machines), Orit Peleg (Computer Science, Colorado), Patrick Shafto (Rutgers/IAS, Mathematics), Pranab Das (Physics, Elon), Tom Griffiths (AI & Cognitive Science, Princeton) I am organizing a semester-long program at IPAM in Fall 2024 on the Mathematics of Intelligences. This program will bring together researchers working on learning in both biological and artifical settings with the goal of identifying and making progress on mathemcial questions related to learning and intelligence. Here is the website.
• I am speaking at a two-day program in mid-August on the theoretical aspects of Machine Learning at the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines Summer School in Woods Hole, MA.
• I am speaking at a workshop on statistical physics and machine learning in beautiful Cargese, Corsica, which runs July 31 - August 12.
• I will be a plenary speaker at the 2023 IAIFI Summer Workshop on Theoretical Physics and ML in August 2023. This workshop will immediately follow the 2023 IAIFI Summer School.
• I am organizing in late June the 2023 Princeton Deep Learning Theory Summer School. Approximately 80 students from around the world will attend to hear courses by Cengiz Pehlevan (Harvard), Arthur Jacot (NYU), Francesca Mignacco (Princeton), Philippe Rigollet (MIT), Jeffrey Pennington (Google), and Ben Adlam (Google).

Research Group

• I am fortunate to supervise several excellent PhD students: Pierfrancesco Beneventano and Kaiqi Jiang.

• Starting in Fall 2023, I am excited to work with two phenomenal postdocs: Gage DeZoort and Mufan Li.

First Placement of Former Members

• Samy Jelassi (Postdoc at Harvard CMSA)

Talks AY 2022/23

Short Courses

1. Neural Networks and Gaussian Processes. Tor Vergata (Rome). Jan 2023. notes; Lecture 1 video, Lecture 2 video, Lecture 3 video
2. Neural Networks at Large and Infinite Width (joint with Yasaman Bahri). Les Houches Summer School on Statistical Physics of Machine Learning (France). July 2022. Lecture 1 video, Lecture 2 video

Workshops, Seminars, and Summer Schools

1. August 2023 (upcoming). IAIFI 2023 Summer Workshop on Physics and Machine Learning (IAIFI, Boston)
2. August 2023 (upcoming). Two-day program on the theoretical aspects of Machine Learning at the Center for Brain Minds and Machines Summer School in Woods Hole, MA.
3. August 2023 (upcoming). Workshop on ”Statistical Physics and Machine Learning: Back Together Again” (CNRS Cargese Physics Center, Corsica)
4. June 2023 (upcoming). 2023 Deep Learning: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)
5. May 2023. International Conference on Approximation Theory and Beyond (Vanderbilt)
6. May 2023. CMSA Probability Seminar (Harvard)
7. March 2023. 2023 Workshop on Machine Learning Theory and Foundations (Beijing - remote)
8. March 2023. Artificial Intelligence and Mathematics Seminar (Remote Seminar Series run by Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo) - video
9. March 2023. Undergraduate Colloquium (Northwestern Math)
10. March 2023. Theoretical Physics for Machine Learning, Aspen Center For Physics (Aspen)
11. February 2023. Quantitative Social Science Colloquium (Princeton)
12. February 2023. AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions Colloquium (Boston) - video
13. January 2023. External Seminar Series, Gatsby Institute for Neuroscience (University College London)
14. November 2023. Institute for Foundations of ML (Austin)
15. October 2022. Workshop on Machine Learning and It’s Applications (National University of Singapore) - video
16. October 2022. Mathematics and Data Seminar (NYU)
17. September 2022. Machine learning in Madrid (virtual)

Papers ArXiv

Deep Learning

Probabilistic Analysis of Deep and Wide Neural Networks + Random Matrix Products

Preprints

1. Random Fully Connected Neural Networks as Perturbatively Solvable Hierarchies (2022) ArXiv

Journal Articles

1. Bayesian Interpolation with Deep Linear Networks, with A. Zlokapa, PNAS (in press) ArXiv
2. Random Neural Networks in the Infinite Width Limit as Gaussian Processes, Annals of Applied Probability (2023) ArXiv
3. Non-asymptotic Results for Singular Values of Gaussian Matrix Products, with G. Paouris. GAFA (2021) ArXiv
4. Products of Many Large Random Matrices and Gradients in Deep Neural Networks, with M. Nica. Communications in Mathematical Physics (2020) ArXiv

Conference Articles

1. Finite Depth and Width Corrections to the Neural Tangent Kernel, with M. Nica, Splotlight at ICLR 2020 ArXiv
2. Which Neural Net Architectures Give Rise to Vanishing and Exploding Gradients? NIPS 2018 ArXiv
3. Deep ReLU Networks Preserve Expected Length, with R. Jeong and D. Rolnick, ICLR 2022 ArXiv

Deep Learning Theory for Practice

Conference Articles

1. Depth Dependence of μP Learning Rates in ReLU MLPs, with S. Jelassi, Z. Ji, S. Reddi, S. Bhojanapalli, and S. Kumar ArXiv
2. Maximal Initial Learning Rates in Deep ReLU Networks, with G. Iyer and D. Rolnick, ICML 2023 ArXiv
3. Deep Architecture Connectivity Matters for Its Convergence: A Fine-Grained Analysis with W. Chen, W. Huang, X. Gong, Z. Wang, NeurIPS 2022 ArXiv
4. How Data Augmentation affects Optimization for Linear Regression, with Y. Sun NeurIPS 2021 ArXiv
5. How to Start Training: The Effect of Initialization and Architecture, with D. Rolnick. NIPS 2018 ArXiv

Approximation with Neural Networks

Preprints

1. Ridgeless Interpolation with Shallow ReLU Networks in 1D is Nearest Neighbor Curvature Extrapolation and Provably Generalizes on Lipschitz Functions (2021) ArXiv
2. Approximating Continuous Functions by ReLU Nets of Minimal Width, with M. Sellke (2017) ArXiv

Journal Articles

1. Neural Network Approximation, with R. DeVore and G. Petrova, Acta Numerica (2020) ArXiv
2. Nonlinear Approximation and (Deep) ReLU Networks, with I. Daubechies, R. DeVore, S. Foucart, and G. Petrova. Constructive Approximation (Special Issue on Deep Networks in Approximation Theory) (2019) ArXiv
3. Universal Function Approximation by Deep Neural Nets with Bounded Width and ReLU Activations. Mathematics 2019, 7(10), 992 (Special Issue on Computational Mathematics, Algorithms, and Data Processing) ArXiv

Conference Articles

1. Deep ReLU Networks Have Surprisingly Few Activation Patterns, with D. Rolnick, NeurIPS 2019 ArXiv
2. Complexity of Linear Regions in Deep Networks, with D. Rolnick, ICML 2019 ArXiv

Spectral Theory

Journal Articles

1. Scaling Asymptotics of Spectral Wigner Functions, with S. Zelditch. Journal of Physics A (Special Edition on Claritons and the Asymptotics of Ideas: the Physics of Michael Berry) (2022) ArXiv
2. Interface Asymptotics of Wigner-Weyl Distributions for the Harmonic Oscillator, with S. Zelditch. Journal d’Analyse (2022) ArXiv
3. Interface Asymptotics of Eigenspace Wigner distributions for the Harmonic Oscillator, with S. Zelditch. Communications in PDE (2020) ArXiv
4. Level Spacings and Nodal Sets at Infinity for Radial Perturbations of the Harmonic Oscillator, with T. Beck. International Math Research Notices, 2021. ArXiv
5. Local Universality for Zeros and Critical Points of Monochromatic Random Waves, with Y. Canzani. Communication in Mathematical Physics, 2020. ArXiv
6. Nodal Sets of Functions with Finite Vanishing Order, with T. Beck and S. Becker-Khan. Calculus of Variations and PDE (2018) ArXiv
7. Scaling of Harmonic Oscillator Eigenfunctions and Their Nodal Sets Around the Caustic, with S. Zelditch and P. Zhou. Communications in Mathematical Physics. Vol. 350, no. 3, pp. 1147–1183, 2017. ArXiv
8. C^∞ Scaling Asymptotics for the Spectral Function of the Laplacian, with Y. Canzani. The Journal of Geometric Analysis (2018) ArXiv
9. Scaling Limit for the Kernel of the Spectral Projector and Remainder Estimates in the Pointwise Weyl Law, with Y. Canzani. Analysis and PDE, Vol. 8 (2015), No. 7, pp. 1707-1731. ArXiv
10. High Frequency Eigenfunction Immersions and Supremum Norms of Random Waves, with Y. Canzani. Electronic Research Announcements. MS 22, no. 0, January 2015, pp. 76 - 86. ArXiv
11. Nodal Sets of Random Eigenfunctions for the Isotropic Harmonic Oscillator, with S. Zelditch and P. Zhou. International Mathematics Research Notices, Vol. 2015, No. 13, pp. 4813 - 4839. ArXiv

Zeros and Critical Points of Random Polynomials

1. The Lemniscate Tree of a Random Polynomial, with M. Epstein and E. Lundberg. Annales Institute Henri Poincare (B), 2018. ArXiv
2. Pairing of Zeros and Critical Points for Random Polynomials. Annales de l’Institut Henri Poincare (B) Probabilites et Statistiques. Volume 53, Number 3 (2017), 1498-1511. ArXiv
3. Pairing of Zeros and Critical Points for Random Meromorphic Functions on Riemann Surfaces</b>. Mathematics Research Letters, Vol. 22 (2015), No. 1, pp. 111-140. ArXiv
4. Correlations and Pairing Between Zeros and Critical Points of Gaussian Random Polynomials. International Math Research Notices (2015), Vol. (2), pp. 381-421. ArXiv

Other

1. Contributed research to Principles of Deep Learning Theory, written by D. Roberts and S. Yaida, Cambridge University Press (2021) ArXiv
2. An Intriguing Property of the Center of Mass for Points on Quadradtic Curves and Surfaces, with L. Hanin and R. Fisher. Mathematics Maganize, v. 80, No. 5, pp. 353-362, 2007.