Archive for data science
open position in mathematical finance at Warwick
Posted in Kids, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags Applied Statistics & Risk Unit, assistant professor position, Coventry, CRiSM, data science, deadline, Department of Computer Science, department of statistics, finance, Great-Britain, mathematical finance, Mathematics Institute, Midlands, MORSE, United Kingdom, University of Warwick, Warwick Centre for the Applications of Mathematical and Computing Sciences, Warwickshire on October 24, 2025 by xi'an
positions at Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano [reposted]
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Travel, University life, Wines with tags data science, European Meeting of Statisticians, Lugano, machine learning, positions, Statistics, Switzerland, tenure track, Università della Svizzera italiana, USI, Zurich on October 6, 2025 by xi'an
USI is looking for a talented junior statistician for Tenure Track Assistant Professor position in “Theoretical Data Science and Machine Learning”. The deadline for applications is 30 November 2025 and we are looking for a starting date around the Summer 2026. Starting salary is 110,000 CHF per year. More details about the required profile can be found on:The faculty is located in Lugano in the South of Switzerland on the University’s main campus, 1.5 hrs from Zürich and 1 hr from Milan. It has been expanding its activities in Data Science, Statistics and Machine Learning with, since 2024, both a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Data Science and a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence. In August 2026, USI will be hosting the European Meeting of Statisticians.
Timeline of the hiring process
- 30 November 2025: application deadline
-
2-4 February 2026: In person interviews in Lugano
-
Summer 2026: envisioned starting date
For any questions, contact the Dean, Prof. Ernst C. Wit (dean.inf@usi.ch).
ERC Starting Grants 2025
Posted in Kids, Travel, University life with tags #ERCSyG, applied mathematics, data science, ERC, ERC Starting Grant, EU grants, EU Horizon Europe programme, EU-Israel Association Agreement, Europe, European Commission, European Research Council, European Union, France, French politics, Horizon Europe, panel, Paris Sciences et Lettres, PE1, PSL, pure mathematics, Switzerland, UK, Università Bocconi, University of Warwick, Ursula von der Leyen on September 13, 2025 by xi'an
Last week, the ERC announced the winners of the Starting Grant campaign for 2025. Congrats to all recipients!
I am no longer a member of the PE1 (maths & data sciences) panel, hence did not contribute in the least to this selection. I noticed very few statistics and data science in the list (albeit obviously not hinting at any correlation with the previous sentence!), except for a project on computational stats. There is neither no one from my departments, even tough Warwick received one grant, nor from my research circles. The re-emergence of the UK as a strong proponent among the nations submitting projects is clear, while Italian candidates remain highly successful (incl. Bocconi!).
Since the EU States did not manage to unanimously agree on suspending the Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement last summer, despite Israel’s breach of human rights on the Gaza strip, there are also ten Israeli projects supported by EU on this round. (Unless the latest announcement of further sanctions by President Ursula von der Leyen suspending bilateral support to Israel does cover this financing.)
Blackwell-Rosenbluth Award 2025 [call]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel, University life with tags Adriana Rosenbluth, Bayesian statistics, biostatistics, Blackwell-Rosenbluth Award, data science, David Blackwell, econometrics, environmental science, industrial statistics, ISBA, jISBA, junior researchers, machine learning on July 3, 2025 by xi'an
[Reposted:] The Blackwell-Rosenbluth Award by j-ISBA ia a recently established award for junior researchers in different areas of Bayesian statistics. The award aims at recognizing outstanding junior Bayesian researchers based on their overall contribution to the field and to the community. There will be six winners in total who will be invited to present their work in two special events of the Junior Bayes Beyond the Borders (JB³) webinar series and receive three years of free ISBA and j-ISBA membership.
ISBA proudly has a wide geographical diversity among its members. To encourage scientific exchange and strengthen research connections between geographies, three prizes will be awarded to researchers based in time zones UTC+0 to UTC+13 [e.g. Africa + Asia + Europe + Oceania] and three to those based in UTC-12 to UTC-1 [e.g. North America + South America].
We welcome nominations of junior researchers working in the broad spectrum of topics in Bayesian statistics, including but not limited to methods, theory, computation, machine learning, data science, biostatistics, econometrics, industrial statistics, environmental science, and software. The deadline is 15 July 2025.
Data science ethics [book review]
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags accountability, AI, applied mathematics, Belgium, bias, book review, CHANCE, China, Chinese edition, data encryption, data science, differential privacy, discrimination, ethics, EU, European Parliament, explicability, fairness, FAT, federated learning, Google, hashing, homomorphic encryption, OUP, Oxford University Press, preprocessing, quantum computing, record linkage, slides, statistical literacy, statistical modelling, SVM, transparency, University of Antwerp on May 5, 2025 by xi'an
Data science ethics (concepts, techniques and cautionary tales), by David Martens, was published in 2022 by Oxford University Press. The book is inspired by the author’s course on Data Science and ethics he has been teaching at the University of Antwerp. (With a link to his slides.) The 255p book proceeds by decomposing the ethics of data science into its different steps: data gathering (Chap. 2), data preprocessing (Chap. 3), modelling (Chap. 4), evaluation (Chap. 5), and deployment (Chap. 6). Following the `FAT Flow Framework´, where FAT stands for fairness, accountability, and transparency.
Do not expect much maths, stats, or anything quantitative: this book is mostly about concepts, even though some (mostly well-known) illustrations are provided. Chapter 2 includes a description of encryption (with homomorphic encryption treated in Chapter 4). And somewhat improbably quantum computing. Differential privacy gets a few pages with not a single formula (until Chapter 4, again).
Chapter 3 covers k-anonymity, record linkage, reidentification, (through cautionary tales) and discrimination through biases in the (learning) dataset. Chapter 4 is defining ε differential privacy with the Laplace randomization as a possible implementation and with no critical stance on the limitations of the concept. The computation limitations of homomorphic encryption are more clearly pointed out. Federated learning is only quickly mentioned. The section about measuring fairness and reducing bias implies that some prior knowledge is available about whom is potentially discriminated and which covariates to add to the model. The last section on explicability of predictions is worthwhile in signalling the difficulty with most (black box) AI but the example opposing an SVM model to a logistic model is not tremendously convincing in that neither model is true.
Chapter 5 addresses the crucial challenge of ethical evaluation in a rather verbose and vague manner. For instance, with no instruction on how to resist adversarial attacks. Or criticising p-hacking and multiple testing while missing the elephant in the room (p-values!). Drifting from the topic when discussing the misdeeds of Diederik Stapel. Most of the same goes about Chapter 6 and its take on ethical deployment, when going through examples such as Google’s policies in China. Or general musing on the impact of AI on societal inequalities (with mentions of companies and CEOs who have since then back-pedalled on their ethical engagement). These chapters are lacking in tools and (more) practical recommendations.
One interesting aspect of the book is the attention paid to the EU(ropean) aspect of these concerns, through the GDPR (General DAta Protection Regulations) adopted by the European Parliament in 2016. (There is also a brief mention of China’s regulations, but no details beyond a reference. Maybe the Chinese edition differs.)
