postdoc position at Monash, Melbourne

[David Dowe sent me the following ad for a position of research fellow in statistics, machine learning, and Astrophysics at Monash University, Melbourne.]

RESEARCH FELLOW: in Statistics and Machine Learning for Astrophysics, Monash University, Australia, deadline 31 July.

We seek to fill a 2.5 year post-doctoral fellowship dedicated to extensions and applications of the Bayesian Minimum Message Length (MML) technique to the analysis of spectroscopic data from recent large astronomical surveys, such as GALAH (GALactic Archaeology with HERMES).  The position is based jointly within the Monash Centre for Astrophysics (MoCA, in the School of Physics and Astronomy) and the Faculty of Information Technology (FIT).

The successful applicant will develop and extend the MML method as needed, applying it to spectroscopic data from the GALAH project, with an aim to understanding nucleosynthesis in stars as well as the formation and evolution of our Galaxy (“galactic archaeology”). The position is based at the Clayton campus (in suburban Melbourne, Australia) of Monash University, which hosts approximately 56,000 equivalent full-time students spread across its Australian and off-shore campuses, and approximately 3500 academic staff.

 The successful applicant will work with world experts in both the Bayesian information-theoretic MML method as well as nuclear astrophysics.  The immediate supervisors will be Professor John Lattanzio (MoCA), Associate Professor David Dowe (FIT) and Dr Aldeida Aleti (FIT).

back from down under

After a sunny weekend to unpack and unwind, I am now back to my normal schedule, on my way to Paris-Dauphine for an R (second-chance) exam. Except for confusing my turn signal for my wiper, thanks to two weeks of intensive driving in four Australian states!, things are thus back to “normal”, meaning that I have enough of a control of my time to handle both daily chores like the R exam and long-term projects. Including the special issues of Statistical Science, TOMACS, and CHANCE (reviewing all books of George Casella in memoriam). And the organisation of MCMSki 4, definitely taking place in Chamonix on January 6-8, 2014, hopefully under the sponsorship of the newly created BayesComp section of ISBA. And enough broadband to check my usual sites and to blog ad nauseam.

This trip to Australia, along the AMSI Lectures as well as the longer visits to Monash and QUT, has been quite an exciting time, with many people met and ideas discussed. I came back with a (highly positive) impression of Australian universities as very active places, just along my impression of Australia being a very dynamic and thriving country, far far away from the European recession. I was particularly impressed by the number of students within Kerrie Mengersen’s BRAG group, when we did held discussions in classrooms that felt full like a regular undergrad class! Those discussions and meetings set me towards a few new projects along the themes of mixture estimation and model choice, as well as convergence assessment. During this trip, I however also felt the lack of long “free times” I have gotten used to, thanks to the IUF chair support, where I can pursue a given problem for a few hours without interruption. Which means that I did not work as much as I wanted to during this tour and will certainly avoid such multiple-step trips in a near future. Nonetheless, overall, the own under” experience was quite worth it! (Even without considering the two weeks of vacations I squeezed in the middle.)

Back to “normal” also means I already had two long delays caused by suicides on my train line…