why should I pay $350 for an on-line conference?!

Last year, I was invited to the SIAM-CSE20 conference for a session on ABC, in München, and was about ready to leave when the conference was posponed for pandemic reasons. My hotel in Garching charged me the entire stay, Danke sehr!,  and I am uncertain about having been fully reimbursed for the reservation. The conference is taking place this year as an on-line meeting and I got re-invited. However, when trying to register, I found that the fees were the same as last year. And did not see the point, given the possibility of delivering a high quality virtual conference for free!, except to support SIAM. Hence withdrew my participation to the meeting, which was not particularly high on my list anyway… (On the same day I received another invitation for an Insurance conference, but they got me confused with my namesake!)

black holes capture Nobel

state of the art in sampling & clustering [workshop]

Next month, I am taking part in a workshop on sampling & clustering at the Max-Planck-Institut für Physik in Garching, Germany (near München). By giving a three hour introduction to ABC, as I did three years ago in Autrans. Being there and talking with local researchers if the sanitary conditions allow. From my office otherwise. Other speakers include Michael Betancourt on HMC and Johannes Buchner on nested sampling. The remote participation to this MPI workshop is both open and free, but participants must register before 18 September, namely tomorrow.

uncertainty quantification unable to quantify coronavirus risks

Hausdorff school on MCMC [28 March-02 April, 2020]

The Hausdorff Centre for Mathematics will hold a week on recent advances in MCMC in Bonn, Germany, March 30 – April 3, 2020. Preceded by two days of tutorials. (“These tutorials will introduce basic MCMC methods and mathematical tools for studying the convergence to the invariant measure.”) There is travel support available, but the application deadline is quite close, as of 30 September.

Note that, in a Spring of German conference, the SIAM Conference on Uncertainty Quantification will take place in Munich (Garching) the week before, on March 24-27. With at least one likelihood-free session. Not to mention the ABC in Grenoble workshop in France, on 19-20 March. (Although these places are not exactly nearby!)