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    Maksims Volkovs, PhD

    Layer 6
    Email: maksims [dot] volkovs [at] gmail [dot] com
    scholar  github  linkedin



ABOUT

I received my PhD at the University of Toronto where I was a member of the Machine Learning Group led by Geoffrey Hinton. My research interests broadly span the field of machine learning with emphasis on recommender systems, information retrieval and time series modeling. I co-founded Layer 6 that was acquired by the TD Bank.

I actively participate in machine learning competitions on Kaggle, where I achieved the grandmaster rank, and other platforms. My team won the ACM RecSys Challenge, a leading international competition on recommender systems, in 2017, 2018 and 2023. Layer 6 is the only organization that has won this challenge three times.

PUBLICATIONS

  • Data-Efficient Multimodal Fusion on a Single GPU (Spotlight)
    Noel Vouitsis, Zhaoyan Liu, Satya Krishna Gorti, Valentin Villecroze, Jesse C. Cresswell, Guangwei Yu, Gabriel Loaiza-Ganem, Maksims Volkovs
    CVPR-2024: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
    [pdf][code]
  • Self-supervised Representation Learning From Random Data Projectors
    Yi Sui, Tongzi Wu, Jesse C. Cresswell, Ga Wu, George Stein, Xiao Shi Huang, Xiaochen Zhang, Maksims Volkovs
    ICLR-2024: International Conference on Learning Representations
    [pdf][code]
  • Robust User Engagement Modeling With Transformers and Self Supervision
    (1'st Place 2023 ACM RecSys Challenge)
    Yichao Lu, Maksims Volkovs
    RecSys-2023: ACM Recommender Systems
    [pdf]
  • Decentralized Federated Learning Through Proxy Model Sharing
    Shivam Kalra, Junfeng Wen, Jesse Cresswell, Maksims Volkovs, Hamid Tizhoosh
    Nature Communications 14 (2023)
    [pdf][code][link]
  • DuETT: Dual Event Time Transformer for Electronic Health Records
    Alex Labach, Saba Zuberi, Seung Eun Yi, Maksims Volkovs, Tomi Poutanen, Rahul G. Krishnan
    MLHC-2023: Machine Learning for Healthcare
    [pdf][code]
  • DiMS: Distilling Multiple Steps of Iterative Non-Autoregressive Transformers for Machine Translation
    Sajad Norouzi, Rasa Hosseinzadeh, Felipe Pérez, Maksims Volkovs
    ACL-2023: Association for Computational Linguistics
    [pdf][code]
  • Temporal Dependencies in Feature Importance for Time Series Prediction
    Kin Kwan Leung, Clayton Rooke, Jonathan Smith, Saba Zuberi, Maksims Volkovs
    ICLR-2023: International Conference on Learning Representations
    [pdf][code]
  • Session-based Recommendation with Transformers
    Yichao Lu, Zhaolin Gao, Zhaoyue Cheng, Jianing Sun, Bradley Brown, Guangwei Yu, Anson Wong, Felipe Perez, Maksims Volkovs
    RecSys-2022: ACM Recommender Systems
    [pdf]
  • X-Pool: Cross-Modal Language-Video Attention for Text-Video Retrieval
    Satya Krishna Gorti, Noel Vouitsis, Junwei Ma, Keyvan Golestan, Maksims Volkovs, Animesh Garg, Guangwei Yu
    CVPR-2022: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
    [pdf][code]
  • Improving Non-Autoregressive Translation Models Without Distillation
    Xiao Shi Huang, Felipe Pérez, Maksims Volkovs
    ICLR-2022: International Conference on Learning Representations
    [pdf][code]
  • MCL: Mixed-Centric Loss for Collaborative Filtering
    Zhaolin Gao, Zhaoyue Cheng, Felipe Pérez, Jianing Sun, Maksims Volkovs
    WWW-2022: International World Wide Web Conference
    [pdf][code]
  • Context-aware Scene Graph Generation with Seq2Seq Transformers
    Yichao Lu, Himanshu Rai, Jason Chang, Boris Knyazev, Shashank Shekhar, Graham W. Taylor, Maksims Volkovs
    ICCV-2021: International Conference on Computer Vision
    [pdf][code]
  • User Engagement Modeling with Deep Learning and Language Models
    Maksims Volkovs, Felipe Perez, Zhaoyue Cheng, Jianing Sun, Sajad Norouzi, Anson Wong, Pawel Jankiewicz, Barum Rho
    RecSys-2021: ACM Recommender Systems
    [pdf]
  • Probabilistic Simulation of Quantum Circuits Using a Deep Learning Architecture
    Juan Carrasquilla, Di Luo, Felipe Pérez, Ashley Milsted, Bryan K. Clark, Maksims Volkovs, Leandro Aolita
    Physical Review 104 (2021)
    [pdf][link]
  • Weakly Supervised Action Selection Learning in Video
    Junwei Ma, Satya Krishna Gorti, Maksims Volkovs, Guangwei Yu
    CVPR-2021: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
    [pdf][code]
  • Development and Validation of a Machine Learning Model Using Administrative Health Data to Predict Onset of Type 2 Diabetes
    Mathieu Ravaut, Vinyas Harish, Hamed Sadeghi, Kin Kwan Leung, Maksims Volkovs, Kathy Kornas, Tomi Poutanen, Laura Rosella
    JAMA Network Open 4, 5 (2021)
    [pdf][link] [press coverage: 1, 2, 3, 4 ]
  • Predicting Adverse Outcomes Due to Diabetes Complications With Machine Learning Using Administrative Health Data
    Mathieu Ravaut, Hamed Sadeghi, Kin Kwan Leung, Maksims Volkovs, Kathy Kornas, Vinyas Harish, Tristan Watson, Gary F. Lewis, Alanna Weisman, Tomi Poutanen, Laura Rosella
    Nature Digital Medicine 4, 24 (2021)
    [pdf][link]
  • HGCF: Hyperbolic Graph Convolution Networks for Collaborative Filtering
    Jianing Sun, Zhaoyue Cheng, Saba Zuberi, Felipe Pérez, Maksims Volkovs
    WWW-2021: International World Wide Web Conference
    [pdf][code]
  • Risk Stratification for COVID-19 Hospitalization: A Multivariable Model Based on Gradient-Boosting Decision Trees
    Jahir M. Gutierrez, Maksims Volkovs, Tomi Poutanen, Tristan Watson, Laura C. Rosella
    CMAJ 4, 9 (2021)
    [pdf][link]
  • TAFA: Two-headed Attention Fused Autoencoder for Context-Aware Recommendations
    Jin Peng Zhou, Zhaoyue Cheng, Felipe Pérez, Maksims Volkovs
    RecSys-2020: ACM Recommender Systems
    [pdf][code]
  • Predicting Twitter Engagement With Deep Language Models
    Maksims Volkovs, Zhaoyue Cheng, Mathieu Ravaut, Hojin Yang, Kevin Shen, Jin Peng Zhou, Anson Wong, Saba Zuberi, Ivan Zhang, Nick Frosst, Helen Ngo, Carol Chen, Bharat Venkitesh, Stephen Gou, Aidan N. Gomez
    RecSys-2020: ACM Recommender Systems
    [pdf]
  • Improving Transformer Optimization Through Better Initialization
    Xiao Shi Huang, Felipe Pérez, Jimmy Ba, Maksims Volkovs
    ICML-2020: International Conference on Machine Learning
    [pdf][supp][code]
  • Guided Similarity Separation for Image Retrieval (Oral)
    Chundi Liu, Guangwei Yu, Cheng Chang, Himanshu Rai, Junwei Ma, Satya Krishna Gorti, Maksims Volkovs
    NeurIPS-2019: Neural Information Processing Systems
    [pdf][code]
  • Cross-Class Relevance Learning for Temporal Concept Localization
    (1'st Place 2019 YouTube-8M Video Understanding Challenge)
    Junwei Ma, Satya Krishna Gorti, Maksims Volkovs, Ilya Stanevich, Guangwei Yu
    ICCV-2019: Workshop on YouTube-8M Large-Scale Video Understanding
    [pdf]
  • Learning Effective Visual Relationship Detector on 1 GPU
    (1'st Place Open Images 2019 Visual Relationship Challenge)
    Yichao Lu, Cheng Chang, Himanshu Rai, Guangwei Yu, Maksims Volkovs
    ICCV-2019: Open Images 2019 Challenge Workshop
    [pdf]
  • Robust Contextual Models for In-Session Personalization
    Maksims Volkovs, Anson Wong, Zhaoyue Cheng, Felipe Perez, Ilya Stanevich, Yichao Lu
    RecSys-2019: ACM Recommender Systems
    [pdf][code]
  • Explore-Exploit Graph Traversal for Image Retrieval
    Cheng Chang, Guangwei Yu, Chundi Liu, and Maksims Volkovs
    CVPR-2019: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
    [pdf][code]
  • Noise Contrastive Estimation for One-Class Collaborative Filtering
    Ga Wu, Maksims Volkovs, Chee Loong Soon, Scott Sanner, Himanshu Rai
    SIGIR-2019: Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval
    [pdf]
  • Two-stage Model for Automatic Playlist Continuation at Scale
    (1'st Place 2018 ACM RecSys Challenge)
    Maksims Volkovs, Himanshu Rai, Zhaoyue Cheng, Ga Wu, Yichao Lu, Scott Sanner
    RecSys-2018: ACM Recommender Systems
    [pdf][code]
  • DropoutNet: Addressing Cold Start in Recommender Systems
    Maksims Volkovs, Guang Wei Yu, Tomi Poutanen
    NeurIPS-2017: Neural Information Processing Systems
    [pdf][code]
  • Content-based Neighbor Models for Cold Start in Recommender Systems
    (1'st Place 2017 ACM RecSys Challenge)
    Maksims Volkovs, Guang Wei Yu, Tomi Poutanen
    RecSys-2017: ACM Recommender Systems
    [pdf]
  • Two-Stage Approach to Item Recommendation from User Sessions
    Maksims Volkovs
    RecSys-2015: ACM Recommender Systems
    [pdf]
  • Effective Latent Models for Binary Feedback in Recommender Systems
    Maksims Volkovs, Guang Wei Yu
    SIGIR-2015: Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval
    [pdf][code]
  • Context Models For Web Search Personalization
    Maksims Volkovs
    WSDM-2014: WSCD Workshop on Log-based Personalization
    [pdf]
  • New Learning Methods for Supervised and Unsupervised Preference Aggregation
    Maksims Volkovs, Richard Zemel
    JMLR-2014: Journal of Machine Learning Research
    [pdf]
  • Continuous Data Cleaning
    Maksims Volkovs, Fei Chiang, Jaroslaw Szlichta, Renée J. Miller
    ICDE-2014: IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering
    [pdf]
  • Supervised CRF Framework for Preference Aggregation
    Maksims Volkovs, Richard Zemel
    CIKM-2013: International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
    [pdf][code]
  • Collaborative Ranking with 17 Parameters
    Maksims Volkovs, Richard Zemel
    NeurIPS-2012: Neural Information Processing Systems
    [pdf]
  • Efficient Sampling for Bipartite Matching Problems
    Maksims Volkovs, Richard Zemel
    NeurIPS-2012: Neural Information Processing Systems
    [pdf][supp]
  • Learning to Rank By Aggregating Expert Preferences
    Maksims Volkovs, Hugo Larochelle, Richard Zemel
    CIKM-2012: International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management
    [pdf][code]
  • A Flexible Generative Model for Preference Aggregation
    Maksims Volkovs, Richard Zemel
    WWW-2012: International World Wide Web Conference
    [pdf][code]
  • Learning to Rank with Multiple Objective Functions
    Krysta M. Svore, Maksims Volkovs, Christopher J. C. Burges
    WWW-2011: International World Wide Web Conference
    [pdf]
  • BoltzRank: Learning to Maximize Expected Ranking Gain (Best Student Paper)
    Maksims Volkovs, Richard Zemel
    ICML-2009: International Conference on Machine Learning
    [pdf]
  • ConEx: A System for Monitoring Queries
    Chaitanya Mishra, Maksims Volkovs
    SIGMOD-2007: International Conference on Management of Data
    [pdf]