Ora Nova Fandina
אורה פנדינה
I am an AI Research Scientist at IBM Research, Israel. My primary area of research at IBM revolves around foundation language models, with a focus on understanding and mitigating safety risks. I am also very interested in theory of machine learning, dimensionality reduction, approximation and theory of CS in general.
Before joining IBM I was a postdoc at the CS Department at Aarhus University, hosted by Kasper Green Larsen. I obtained my Ph.D. at the CS Department of the Hebrew University, under the guidance of Yair Bartal and Ofer Neiman . Email: fandina (at) gmail (dot) com
NEW: ML Concepts Seminar . The seminar group at IBM Research in Israel, Haifa, given by Eitan Farchi and Ora Fandina, PhD. This study seminar aims at unveiling the underlying relations between probability, statistics, decision theory, game theory, optimization and ML.
Publications
- Unveiling Safety Vulnerabilities of Large Language Models, GEM Workshop at EMNLP 2023 [arXiv]
George Kour, Marcel Zalmanovici, Naama Zwerdling, Esther Goldbraich, Ora Nova Fandina, Ateret Anaby-Tavor, Orna Raz, Eitan Farchi
- The Fast Johnson-Lindenstrauss Transform is Even Faster, ICML 2023 [arXiv]
with Mikael Møller Høgsgaard and Kasper Green Larsen
Haiku abstract (by chatGPT) An old method's pace // revised, now faster to use. // Efficiency reigns.
- Barriers for Faster Dimensionality Reduction, STACS 2023 [arXiv]
with Mikael Møller Høgsgaard and Kasper Green Larsen
- Optimality of the Johnson-Lindenstrauss Dimensionality Reduction for Practical Measures, SoCG 2022 [arXiv] [slides] [video]
with Yair Bartal and Kasper Green Larsen
Haiku abstract It was not designed // to preserve the average. // Yet, it optimally does.
- Online Probabilistic Metric Embedding: A General Framework for Bypassing Inherent Bounds, SODA 2020 [pdf]
with Yair Bartal and Seeun William Umboh
Haiku abstract Online random trees. // Tight. Yet, the error is large. // Are they still of use?
- Dimensionality Reduction: Theoretical Perspective On Practical Measures, NeurIPS 2019 [pdf] [full version] [slides] [poster] [code] [video]
with Yair Bartal and Ofer Neiman
Haiku abstract They say, in practice, // few dimensions are enough. // But in theory?
with Yair Bartal and Ofer Neiman
Haiku abstract In a doubling world, // You see this grove of trees? // They are enough.
Publications outside of the main research scope
- Holographic parallel processor for calculating Kronecker product, Natural Computing 14 (2015), 433-436 [pdf]
with Shlomi Dolev and Joseph Rosen
- Succinct Permanent is NEXP-hard with Many Hard Instances, CIAC13 [pdf]
with Shlomi Dolev and Dan Gutfreund
Teaching
Metric Embedding Theory and its Algorithmic Applications, at HUJI. Lecturer, Fall 2016 - Fall 2019 [Lecture notes]
Data Structures, at BGU. Lecturer, Fall 2014 - Fall 2016
Algorithms, at Israeli Flight Academy. Lecturer, Fall 2013 - Fall 2015
Outreach
- Talking about dimensionality reduction at the NucleAI Academy, January 2023, Tel Aviv, Israel [ video (in English) ]
- Talking at the IsraelClouds 2020 meetup, Tel Aviv, Israel [video (in Hebrew) ]
- Talking at the Women in AI 2020 meetup, Tel Aviv, Israel [slides]
- I served as math adviser for the Young Scientists National Competition 2019, 2020 chapters
- I organized the Math Philosophy Book Club meetings at HUJI, 2016
Personal
I was born and grew up in Ukraine, where I finished high school.
I arrived in Israel together with my family in my teens.
Dan is my husband and Ruth and Esther are our daughters.
Together with Dan we have backpacked in:
Ethiopia, Georgia, Tajikistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Japan, Costa-Rica, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Italy, Slovakia, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan.
The Hebrew Language
The Academy of the Hebrew Language is where you can submit a proposal for new Hebrew words, as well as read about the miraculous history of the Hebrew language.
Math/CS Reading List
- Kurt Godel’s Letter to John von Neumann (1956), [pdf]
- More is Different (1972), P.W. Anderson [pdf]
- Cargo Cult Science (1974), Richard Feynman [pdf]
- Big omicron and big omega and big theta (1976), D.E. Knuth [pdf]
- What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic (1991), D. Goldberg [pdf]
- All I really need to know...(1993), D. P. Stern [pdf]
- Possible Trends in Mathematics in the Coming Decades (1998), M. Gromov [pdf]
- The Vinous Shock: How to Open a Bottle with a Book (2018), M. Lewi [pdf]
- Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science (2021), H.L. Lewis
