Archive for EU
privacy research day in Paris [24 June 2026]
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags AI regulation, CNIL, Commission Nationale Informatique et Libertés, data reconstruction, differential privacy, EU, fees, France, G7, G7 of Data Protection Authorities, Global Privacy Control, Paris, privacy, Privacy-Enhancing Technologies on June 11, 2026 by xi'an
Nature on ERC funding
Posted in Books, University life with tags agentic AI, AI, AI generated grant applications, bibliometrics, Brussels, budget cuts, ERC, ERC Advanced Grant, ERC Consolidator Grant, ERC Starting Grant, EU, EU Horizon Europe programme, European Commission, European Parliament, European Research Council, h-factor, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, Nature, reviewers, reviewing on June 8, 2026 by xi'an
In four recent opinion articles, Nature questions the response of the European Research Council (ERC) to a steep increase in grant applications supported by AI tools, namely Responses to the AI grant flood must prioritize fairness as part of excellence, Prestigious European science funder scraps stricter rules after researcher backlash, Could agentic AI topple grant-funding systems?, and European funder must increase capacity to meet the ambition of scientists,
What is happening is that LLMs are making the construction and design of grant applications much easier, even improving their scientific worth in many cases. Hence seeing the number of submitted proposals rise. For instance, an 142% for EU Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions fellowships. This is getting worse with agentic AI. The funding bodies are unable to implement the various bans they set against relying on these agents. The low-tech solution of increasing the role of interviews and team assessments, while worthwhile, is not working above a certain threshold, being time-intensive (and open to many biases). A comment of 27 April 2026 suggests burning all bridges and resorting to locally designed agentic AIs to assess these proposals… As if the well-studied drawbacks of AIs and LLMs relying on black-box, biased, bibliometric, unsecured, machines would magically vanish with this new construct! The mention of post hoc human verification is also wishful thinking, considering the impact of earlier bibliometric tools such as the h-factor. (Even more recent proposals are similarly bananas.)
An editorial of 05 May 2026 claims the higher moral ground by calling for fairness and inclusivity. But with a bounded budget and an equally bounded pool of human reviewers, the protocol of evaluating an ever-growing pile of applications cannot remain the same. The ERC step of limiting how many grants researchers can apply for and how long unsuccessful candidates have to wait before they can re-apply has been rescinded under protest from some researchers. But a call of 01 May 2026 for more structural investment does not stand the test of reality. Working in an ERC panel is time-consuming, equivalent to one month of investment, and finding more willing experts is unlikely to succeed, not mentioning the rise in the ERC budget the EU Commission is not going to vote, the more (or the less!) with the rise of populist fractions in the European Parliament
heading south [cover]
Posted in Books, pictures, Travel, University life with tags America, Bering Strait, cover, demographic history, ERC, EU, Europe, First Nations, genetic analysis, genomic history, headdress, indigeneous Americans, Latin America, natural selection, Nature, NSF, population genomics on June 4, 2026 by xi'an
Nature on mirror conferences
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags Aussois, BayesComp 2025, BayesComp 2027, Bayesian computation, Copenhagen, EU, EurIPS 2025, French Alps, ISBA, ISBA 2026, ISBA 2028, Mexico City, mirror workshop, multihub conferences, NeurIPS 2025, satellite meetings, statistical machine learning, Texas, Texas A&M University, Trump administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, US politics, Vanoise, visa revocation on January 28, 2026 by xi'an
“…the artificial-intelligence conference NeurIPS hosted not only its main meeting in San Diego, California, but also its first-ever alternative location, in Mexico City, with the goal of alleviating travel challenges (…) in response to “skyrocketing attendance and difficulties in obtaining travel visas some attendees have experienced in the past few years when only one location was available” [while] a group of AI researchers in Europe organized an independent spin-off conference, dubbed EurIPS, in Copenhagen (…) owing to concerns including climate change [and people expressing] a desire for a less hostile environment”
With a limited number of 500 participants attending in Mexico. And a massive number in Copenhagen, over 2,000! With a final quote from Emtiyaz Khan (a plenary speaker at ISBA 2026):
“[I] chose to travel to EurIPS rather than NeurIPS because of the difficulties many others faced in getting into the United States. The smaller nature of EurIPS made it much easier to meet and interact with other scientists. I absolutely loved it and I would love to see it happen again.”
This state of affairs is not going to vanish with Trump adding more countries to the banned country list, 75 at this stage!, and this is a call to arms for ISBA and IMS conference organisers towards planning for multi-hub configurations, since such international organisations cannot exclude a third of the countries in the World from attending their conferences. Which makes our current ISBA survey all the more relevant! I am currently building a mirror meeting for BayesComp 2027 in Aussois, French Alps. For those who cannot or do not wish to travel to Texas for the main conference.
supporting public broadcasting
Posted in Books, Kids, Travel with tags anti-wokism, BBC, DOM, EU, European Commission, European Media Freedom Act, far-right ideology, France Inter, france.tv, freedom of press, French politics, media, national public radio, overseas, regions on December 30, 2025 by xi'an
