3-D bridge now opened!

The 3D printed bridge I had mentioned in a previous blog was installed and officially opened over an Amsterdam canal, last month. Besides the company printing this steel bridge, over six months, researchers from the Turing Institute, including my friend Mark Girolami, developed a virtual version of the bridge using embedded sensors to monitor the behaviour and evolution of the real bridge over time and usage. Next time I am in the city, I’ll make sure to run bridge sampling!

would you walk this bridge with Mark?!

Read this article on Mark Girolami (Warwick), now  Lloyd’s Register Foundation / Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Data Centric Engineering, who is starting a new project on the monitoring of the first 3D-printed bridge, soon to be installed in Amsterdam, by creating a virtual twin, fed by sensors from the real bridge, in order to check for safety and integrity. I like this notion of data-centric engineering! (Which sounds like the revenge of the statistician, at least in the ancient era of French engineering schools, when statistics was not considered a part of engineering.)

lecturer position in Data Centric Engineering and Statistics, Imperial College London

My friend and Warwick colleague Mark Girolami sent me this announcement for a permanent Lecturer position at Imperial [College London], funded by his recent research chair by the Royal Academy of Engineering (congrats, Mark!). Deadline is April 13, so hurry up!!!

 

plenary talks at JSM 2017 in Baltimore

Bayesian computation: a summary of the current state, and samples backwards and forwards

“The Statistics and Computing journal gratefully acknowledges the contributions for this special issue, celebrating 25 years of publication. In the past 25 years, the journal has published innovative, distinguished research by leading scholars and professionals. Papers have been read by thousands of researchers world-wide, demonstrating the global importance of this field. The Statistics and Computing journal looks forward to many more years of exciting research as the field continues to expand.” Mark Girolami, Editor in Chief for The Statistics and Computing journal

Our joint [Peter Green, Krzysztof Łatuszyński, Marcelo Pereyra, and myself] review [open access!] on the important features of Bayesian computation has already appeared in the special 25th anniversary issue of Statistics & Computing! Along with the following papers

• Statistics and computing: the genesis of data science, David J. Hand, Founding Editor
• EM for mixtures: Initialization requires special care, Jean-Patrick Baudry, Gilles Celeux
• Sequential Monte Carlo methods for Bayesian elliptic inverse problems, Alexandros Beskos, Ajay Jasra, Ege A. Muzaffer, Andrew M. Stuart
• Bayesian inference via projections, Ricardo Silva, Alfredo Kalaitzis
• Computing functions of random variables via reproducing kernel Hilbert space representations, Bernhard Schölkopf, Krikamol Muandet, Kenji Fukumizu, Stefan Harmeling, Jonas Peters
• The Poisson transform for unnormalised statistical models, Simon Barthelmé, Nicolas Chopin
• Scalable estimation strategies based on stochastic approximations: classical results and new insights, Panos Toulis, Edoardo M. Airoldi
• de Finetti Priors using Markov chain Monte Carlo computations, Sergio Bacallado, Persi Diaconis, Susan Holmes
• Simulation-efficient shortest probability intervals, Ying Liu, Andrew Gelman, Tian Zheng
• Flexible parametric bootstrap for testing homogeneity against clustering and assessing the number of clusters, Christian Hennig, Chien-Ju Lin

which means very good company, indeed! And happy B’day to Statistics & Computing!