MCMSki IV [prizes]

Congratulations to the MCMSki IV poster prize winners:

• C. Baey, Stochastic algorithms for nonlinear mixed models
• A. Pakman, Auxiliary-variable Exact Hamiltonian Monte Carlo Samplers for Binary Distributions
• C. Grazian, Approximate Bayesian computation for the elimination of nuisance parameters
• D. Rudolf,  On the hybrid slice sampler
• M. Katzfuss, Statistical inference for massive distributed spatial data using low-rank models
• E. Vernet, Posterior consistency for nonparametric hidden Markov models with finite state space

who each received two books from those kindly sent by Academic Press, CRC Press, and Springer-Verlag. (Except one of the above who should contact me for delivering her/him the dedicated books!) And to the honourable mention winners:

• G. Zanella, Bayesian complementary clustering, MCMC for data association and Anglo-Saxon placenames
• S. Lacoste-Julien, Sequential Kernel Herding: Frank-Wolfe Optimization for Particle Filtering
• R. Dutta and M. Gutmann, Classifier ABC
• A. Durmus, New bounds for the sub-geometric convergence of Markov Chains in Wasserstein metric and application to the pre-conditionned Crank Nicholson algorithm
• M. Banterle, Sufficient dimension reduction for ABC via RKHS

And to the members of the jury who worked hard both evening to produce this set of winners… Congrats too to Mina Vekhala from Helsinki who left the banquet with a pair of Blossom skis, thanks to a random draw from U({1,…,188}) of a dinner participant. She was 154th on the list and this number came out first. (Renewed thanks to Blossom skis for their generosity!)