Yuzhou Chen

Capitalizing on the intuitive premise that shape characteristics are more robust to perturbations, we bridge adversarial graph learning with the emerging tools from computational topology, namely, persistent homology representations of graphs. We introduce the concept of witness complex to adversarial analysis on graphs, which allows us to focus only on the salient shape characteristics of graphs, yielded by the subset of the most essential nodes (i.e., landmarks), with minimal loss of topological information on the whole graph. The remaining nodes are then used as witnesses, governing which higher-order graph substructures are incorporated into the learning process. Armed with the witness mechanism, we design Witness Graph Topological Layer (WGTL), which systematically integrates both local and global topological graph feature representations, the impact of which is, in turn, automatically controlled by the robust regularized topological loss. Given the attacker's budget, we derive the important stability guarantees of both local and global topology encodings and the associated robust topological loss. We illustrate the versatility and efficiency of WGTL by its integration with five GNNs and three existing non-topological defense mechanisms. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that WGTL boosts the robustness of GNNs across a range of perturbations and against a range of adversarial attacks.

We propose a new topological clustering methodology, based on generalizing an empirical risk minimization framework, using a reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) for vectorized persistent homology representations of point clouds. In contrast to conventional Euclidean-based clustering methods which address only pairwise similarity among data points, our new approach of topological K-means clusters data based on similarity of shapes which are exhibited by the local vicinity of each data point at multiple scales. Thereby, topological clustering systematically captures the inherent local and global higher order data characteristics that are otherwise inaccessible with Euclidean-based clustering. We summarize the extracted shape characteristics of each local vicinity in the form of a persistence diagram (PD) and embed the PDs into a RKHS, which induces a distance among shapes of local vicinities in Hilbert space. Our derived theoretical guarantees on stability and consistency of the topological partitions are the first theoretical results of this kind at the intersection of topological data analysis and statistical inference. Additionally, we establish a number of new theoretical results on bounds of covering numbers in Hilbert spaces which are of independent interest in statistical learning theory. We demonstrate the superior performance of the new topological K-means clustering on simulations and the US COVID-19 data.

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have become the de facto standard for analyzing graph-structured data, leveraging message-passing techniques to capture both structural and node feature information. However, recent studies have raised concerns about the statistical reliability of uncertainty estimates produced by GNNs. This paper addresses this crucial challenge by introducing a novel technique for quantifying uncertainty in non-exchangeable graph-structured data, while simultaneously reducing the size of label prediction sets in graph classification tasks. We propose Conformalized Tensor-based Topological Neural Networks (CF-T2NN), a new approach for rigorous prediction inference over graphs. CF-T2NN employs tensor decomposition and topological knowledge learning to navigate and interpret the inherent uncertainty in decision-making processes. This method enables a more nuanced understanding and handling of prediction uncertainties, enhancing the reliability and interpretability of neural network outcomes. Our empirical validation, conducted across 10 real-world datasets, demonstrates the superiority of CF-T2NN over a wide array of state-of-the-art methods on various graph benchmarks. This work not only enhances the GNN framework with robust uncertainty quantification capabilities but also sets a new standard for reliability and precision in graph-structured data analysis.

Graph classification in medical imaging and drug discovery requires accuracy and robust uncertainty quantification. To address this need, we introduce Conditional Prediction ROC (CP-ROC) bands, offering uncertainty quantification for ROC curves and robustness to distributional shifts in test data. Although developed for Tensorized Graph Neural Networks (TGNNs), CP-ROC is adaptable to general Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) and other machine learning models. We establish statistically guaranteed coverage for CP-ROC under a local exchangeability condition. This addresses uncertainty challenges for ROC curves under non-iid setting, ensuring reliability when test graph distributions differ from training data. Empirically, to establish local exchangeability for TGNNs, we introduce a data-driven approach to construct local calibration sets for graphs. Comprehensive evaluations show that CP-ROC significantly improves prediction reliability across diverse tasks. This method enhances uncertainty quantification efficiency and reliability for ROC curves, proving valuable for real-world applications with non-iid objects.