ABC postdoc in Olso

Jukka Corander sent me the announcement that he is opening a 3 year postdoctoral position at the University of Oslo, to work with him and his team on ABC projects. This sounds quite an exciting offer, plus gives the nominee the opportunity to live in the most enjoyable city of Oslo for several years in fairly comfy conditions! The deadline is May 31. (If I was at a stage of my career where applying made sense, I would definitely candidate. Not even waiting for the outcome of the French elections on May 7!)

gone banamaths!

Another postdoc offer in Paris

Here is an offer for a 6 to 12 month postdoc in Paris, with one theme potentially interesting for Og’s readers:

The CARMIN Project, created as part of the call for “laboratories of excellence” of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research, aims at creating  places where mathematicians can exchange and pool their skills in order to solve  big scientific issues. In the mathematics field, there are indeed a  number of open scientific problems that cannot be solved by a single person. This “mathematical” infrastructure is essential for maintaining excellence in the French mathematical school at the highest international level. (More information)­ ­

PRESENTATION of the PROGRAMM

As part of the LabEx CARMIN, IHES and IHP offer young researchers in mathematics a joint post-doctoral programme for 2012-2013 that will enable candidates selected by the Scientific Committee to combine a research visit at IHES with participation to one of the quaterly IHP thematic programmes for a duration of 6 to 12 months.

CONDITION

• To have obtained a PhD in 2009 or later.

­• To participate in one of the three thematic trimestrial programmes 2012-2013 at IHP:

– 10 September 2012 – 14 December 2012: Conformal Geometry and Kählerian Geometry (M. GURSKY, E. HÉBEY, F. PACARD, J. VIACLOVSKY)

– 7 January – 5 April 2013: Mathematics and Bio-Economics for the Sustainable Management of Biodiversity (M. DE LARA, L. DOYEN)

– 15 April -12 July 2013: Variational and Spectral Methods in Quantum Mechanics (M. ESTEBAN, M. LEWIN)

HOW TO APPLY Each candidate is expected to apply online

• filling out the application form online • and submitting the following documents:

– Curriculum-vitæ

– Publication list

– Research Project

– 2 or 3 recommendation letters to be sent directly to ­candidature-carmin [ã] ihes.fr

APPLICATION DEADLINE : 10 December 10 2011

About doing a postdoc

Speaking from personal experience, postdoctoral positions are an essential part of a researcher training that I recommend to all my PhD students, even though they do not always follow this recommendation, and rank high when hiring new faculty! Especially recommended in our French academic structure where

1. PhD students may complete their PhD as early as 25 or 26,
2.  the local job market is rather favourable to statisticians,
3.  regular university positions are tenured from the start, but
4.  involve a heavy teaching load…
5. and do pay less than a postdoc in many countries!

Unless family issues are preventing one from spending one or two years abroad, the experience brought by spending this time in a foreign department with a different academic culture is almost invariably highly positive. And this for many reasons: a high level of freedom and time for conducting research, most often no teaching, writing papers and fattening one’s vita, no administrative burden, usually in a prestigious institution with a top quality research group, the opportunity to start collaborations with more senior researchers, limited or no teaching, sometimes the opportunity of learning a new (human/computer) language, the possibility of discovering a new country, did I mention not teaching?!, etc. Even though sabbatical years are available in most academic systems, this is clearly the freest of all times in one’s life and taking the opportunity of a postdoc can shape one’s academic and non-academic future! So, unless there are no postdoc positions available anywhere appealing (!), or those offered are in a topic that sounds too far from one’s PhD research, there are few reasons to miss the benefits and the fun of doing a postdoc. I consider that doing a postdoc (in Purdue then in Cornell, terrific experiences both!) was one of the best and most influential decisions in my whole life. (This sounds a bit too much like a travel brochure, but this was my answer to Luke Bornn’s question “In what circumstances would you recommend your students do a post-doc?  In what circumstances is a post-doc not the best choice for graduates?” for the June ISBA Bulletin!)

Postdoc on adaptive MCMC in Paris

Although the official deadline is long past, I just became aware of this call for a postdoctoral position in Paris starting next Fall. Please feel free to apply:

Summary Adaptive Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods are currently a very active field of research. MCMC methods are sampling methods, based on Markov Chains which are ergodic with respect to the target probability measure. The principle of adaptive methods is to optimize on the fly some design parameters of the algorithm with respect to a given criterion reflecting the sampler’s performance (optimize the acceptance rate, optimize an importance sampling function, etc…). A postdoctoral position is opened to work on the numerical analysis of adaptive MCMC methods: convergence, numerical efficiency, development and analysis of new algorithms. A particular emphasis will be given to applications in statistics and molecular dynamics. (Detailed description) Position funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) through the 2009-2012 project ANR-08-BLAN-0218. The position will benefit from an interdisciplinary environment involving numerical analysts, statisticians and probabilists, and of strong interactions between the partners of the project ANR-08-BLAN-021

Required diploma PhD thesis in statistics or probability, with a competitive track record.

Required skills experience in MCMC methods and their mathematical analysis.

Deadline for applications : September 2010. Applications must include : a detailed CV with a description of realized projects a motivation letter a summary of the thesis 2 or 3 recommendation letters preferred starting dates and duration and must be sent to Gersende FORT (gfort@tsi.enst.fr) in pdf format; or by standard mail to : Gersende FORT (LTCI, 46 rue Barrault, 75 634 Paris Cedex 13, Paris, France).

Duration : 11 months.

Location : Paris.