IMS conFlorence [ICSDS2022]

The IMS is launching a new conference series, the annual IMS International Conference on Statistics and Data Science (ICSDS), whose goal is to reach out and expand membership from emerging areas of data science, underrepresented groups, and from regions outside of North America,  first edition is next December (13-16) in Firenze (Florence), Italy. (And which I plan to attend.) Reposted from the conference web page:

The objective of ICSDS is to bring together researchers in statistics and data science from academia, industry and government in a stimulating setting to exchange ideas on the developments of modern statistics, machine learning, and broadly defined theory, methods and applications in data science.

The conference will consist of plenary sessions, and about 50 invited, contributed and poster sessions. Young researchers are particularly encouraged to participate, as a portion of the invited sessions will be designated for young researchers.

congrats [IMS related]

When I read through the June-July issue of the IMS Bulletin, I saw many causes for celebration and congratulations!, from Richard Samworth’s award of an Advanced ERC grant, to the new IMS fellows, including my friends, Ismael Castillo, Steve Mc Eachern, and Natesh Pillai, as well as my current or former associate editors, Johan Segers (JRSS B) and Changbao Wu (Biometrika). To my friends Alicia Carriquiry, David Dunson, and Tamara Broderick receiving 2021 COPSS awards, along others, including Wing Hung Wong (of the precursor Tanner & Wong, 1987 fame!). Natesh also figures among the “Quadfecta 23”, the exclusive club of authors having published at least one paper in each of the four Annals published by the IMS!

IMS-Bernoulli congress delayed [WC2020]

Just received the sad news that the 10th World Congress in Probability and Statistics (WC2020), jointly organized by the Bernoulli Society and IMS, in Seoul, 17-21 August 2020, must be delayed till next year. I expect the same to happen for JSM 2020 in Philly.

off to Singapore [IMS workshop]

Tonight I am off to the National University of Singapore, at the Institute for Mathematical Sciences [and not the Institute of Mathematical Statistics!], to take part in a (first) week workshop on Bayesian Computation for High-Dimensional Statistical Models, covering topics like Approximate Bayesian Computation, Markov chain Monte Carlo, Multilevel Monte Carlo and Particle Filters. Having just barely recovered from the time difference with Vancouver, I now hope I can switch with not too much difficulty to Singapore time zone! As well as face the twenty plus temperature gap with the cool weather this morning in the Parc…

JSM 2015 [day #1]

This afternoon, at JSM 2015, in Seattle, we had the Bayesian Computation I and II sessions that Omiros Papaspiliopoulos and myself put together (sponsored by IMS and ISBA). Despite this being Sunday and hence having some of the participants still arriving, the sessions went on well in terms of audience. Thanks to Mark Girolami’s strict presidency, we were so much on time in Bayesian Computation I that we had 20mn left for a floor discussion that turned into a speakers’ discussion! All talks were of obvious interest for MCMCists, but Ryan Adams’ presentation on firefly Monte Carlo got me thinking for most of the afternoon on different ways of exploiting the existence of a bound on the terms composing the target. With little to show by the end of the afternoon! On the mundane side, I was sorry to miss Pierre Jacob, who was still in France due to difficulties in obtaining a working visa for Harvard (!), and surprised to see Dawn Woodard wearing a Uber tee-shirt, until she told us she was now working at Uber! Which a posteriori makes sense, given her work on traffic predictions!