CIRM in dire need of help

The International Mathematics Conference Centre, CIRM, located in Luminy, Marseille, France, has been deeply disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Up to 60 % of the events planned there have been cancelled so far and all remaining conferences have gone virtual or at best hybrid, open to a remote audience, including in an interactive way. This has required important and unexpected investments. Furthermore, this crisis happened at the worst possible moment as CIRM had just finished doubling its infrastructure capacities. This is why I strongly support the call from the French Mathematical Society (SMF) to make a donation to CIRM before the end of the year, especially from researchers who benefited from its hospitality and unique environment.

maison Poincaré

away from CIRM

Due to the new lockdown measures enforced in France and in particular in Marseilles, the CIRM workshop on QMC and randomness has turned virtual, and I will thus give my talk on Coordinate sampler : A non-reversible Gibbs-like sampler from Paris. Rather than from the Luminy campus after an early morning run to the top of Mont Puget as we used to do on the previous workshop there. With versions of PDMP running on QMC (which makes sense when considering the deterministic component of the sampler).

ten day mathematical competition for undergrads [no stats!]

Masterclass in Bayesian Statistics in Marseilles next Fall

This post is to announce a second occurrence of the exciting “masterclass in Bayesian Statistics” that we organised in 2016, near Marseilles. It will take place on 22-26 October 2018 once more at CIRM (Centre International de Recherches Mathématiques, Luminy, Marseilles, France). The targeted audience includes all scientists interested in learning how Bayesian inference may be used to tackle the practical problems they face in their own research. In particular PhD students and post-docs should benefit most directly from this masterclass. Among the invited speakers, Kerrie Mengersen from QUT, Brisbane, visiting Marseilles this Fall, will deliver a series of lectures on the interface between Bayesian statistics and applied modelling, Havard Rue from KAUST will talk on computing with INLA, and Aki Vehtari from Aalto U, Helsinki, will give a course on Bayesian model assessment and model choice. There will be two tutorials on R and on Stan.

All interested participants in this masterclass should pre-register as early as possible, given that the total attendance is limited to roughly 90 participants. Some specific funding for local expenses (i.e., food + accommodation on-siteat CIRM) is available (thanks to CIRM, and potentially to Fondation Jacques Hadamard, to be confirmed); this funding will be attributed by the scientific committee, with high priority to PhD students and post-docs.