Efrén Cruz Cortés

Efrén Cruz Cortés is an Eberly Research Fellow and Postdoctoral Researcher at Penn State.

Efrén received their Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan in 2017.

Efrén studies the way algorithms reproduce bias and discrimination. Automated procedures are often designed to mimic the historical data humans have generated. Therefore, unintendedly, they have learned to discriminate based on class, race, gender, and other vulnerable groups. Such a phenomenon has serious consequences, as it may lead to furthering economic inequality, depriving the poor of resources, over-incarceration of people of color, etc. efrén's goal is to understand the dynamics of the system the algorithm belongs to and assess which structural interventions are the best actions to both avoid discrimination and accomplish the desired goal for the population of interest.

Publications

• D. Ghosh, E. Cruz Cortés, K. Josey and F. Yang, An Empirical Process Framework for Covariate Balance in Causal Inference, 2020 (submitted).
   
• E. Cruz Cortés and D. Ghosh, An Invitation to System-wide Algorithmic Fairness, Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Society, 2020 (ACM, arxiv).
   
• P. Rudra, E. Cruz Cortés, X. Zhang, D. Ghosh, Multiple testing approaches for hypotheses in integrative genomics, WIREs Computational Statistics, 2019, (Wiley).
   
• D. Ghosh and E. Cruz Cortés, A Gaussian Process Framework for Overlap and Causal Effect Estiamtion with High-Dimensional Covariates, Journal of Causal Inference, 2019, (JCI).
   
• E. Cruz Cortés and C. Scott, Consistent Kernel Density Estimation with Non-Vanishing Bandwidth, undergoing expansion, (arxiv).
   
• E. Cruz Cortés, Aronowitz, Deshmukh, Li, Miles, Navarrete and Solórzano From Chemistry to History via Kernel Embedding, (in preparation).
   
• C. Croft, E. Cruz Cortés, J. Harge, L. Tawil, A Provocation Towards Moving, QED: A Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking, 2017 (JSTOR).
   
• E. Cruz Cortés and C. Scott, Sparse Approximation of a Kernel Mean, arXiv:1503.00323, IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. 65, pp. 1310-1323,2017. (arxiv, ieee).
   
• E. Cruz Cortés and C. Scott, Scalable Sparse Approximation of a Sample Mean, Proc. 2014 IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustic, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), pp. 5237-5241, 2014. (pdf).
   
• B. L. Mellor, E. Cruz Cortés, S. Khadka and B. Mazzeo, Increased Bandwidth for Dielectric Spectroscopy of Proteins Through Electrode Surface preparation, Review of Scientific Instruments, 83, 2012.
   
• B. L. Mellor, E. Cruz Cortés, D. Busath and B. Mazzeo, Method for Estimating the Internal Permittivity of Proteins using Dielectric Spectroscopy, Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 115, 2011.

Teaching

STAT 440 - Computational Statistics