Archive for European Research Council
Congrats to Arnak Dalalyan for his ERC advanced grant!
Posted in Statistics, University life with tags CREST, ERC, ERC Advanced Grant, EU, Europe, European Research Council, generative AI, generative models, Horizon Europe, Statistics on July 17, 2025 by xi'an
Choose Europe for Science
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags @ScientistTrump, academic position, Argentina, Choose Europe, ERC, EU, Europe, European Commission, European Research Council, Javier Milei, La Sorbonne, Maria Leptin, public funding, super-grant, Trump administration, Ursula von der Leyen, US politics on May 14, 2025 by xi'an
Bayesian decision-theory for data privacy [surfin’ the Oce’n, 30 April, INRIA Paris]
Posted in Statistics, University life with tags #ERCSyG, Bayesian decision theory, Bayesian privacy, decision theory, differential privacy, ERC, ERC Synergy Grant, European Research Council, hybrid Monte Carlo, INRIA, INRIA Paris, MCMC, Monte Carlo methods, Ocean, Paris, privacy, seminar, Telecom Paris on April 23, 2025 by xi'an
Abstract
The scientific and economic value of data continues to grow alongside technology advances. New hardware and software developments enable, but often require, larger and more complex datasets to function effectively. As the importance of input data to these systems becomes increasingly recognized, so too does the loss of privacy for data providers. In this context, data privacy emerges as a critical issue for fields such as statistics and machine learning, as well as for scientific and industrial endeavours that rely on sensitive data. We propose a framework for measuring privacy from a Bayesian decision-theoretic perspective. This framework enables the creation of new, purpose-driven privacy principles that are rigorously justified, while also allowing for the assessment of existing privacy definitions through decision theory. We pay particular attention to the privacy of deterministic algorithms, which are overlooked by current privacy standards, and to the privacy of N Monte Carlo samples drawn from an invariant distribution as N goes to infinity. We show that Probabilistic Differential Privacy is a special case of our framework and provide some new interpretations for Differential Privacy as a result.
Pierre Jacob awarded an ERC-Consolidator grant [congrats!]
Posted in pictures, Statistics, University life with tags Council of the European Union, coupling, ERC, ERC Consolidator Grant, ESSEC, EU, European Research Council, European Union, Markov chain Monte Carlo, MCMC, Pierre Jacob, scalable MCMC on December 6, 2024 by xi'an
2024 ERC Starting Grants announced
Posted in Kids, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags applied mathematics, Belgium, Brussels, conflict of interest, data science, ERC, ERC Starting Grant, EU grants, EU Horizon Europe programme, Europe, European Commission, European Research Council, European Union, Horizon Europe, panel, Paris Sciences et Lettres, PE1, PSL, pure mathematics, scientific computing, Statistics, UK, University of Warwick on September 22, 2024 by xi'an
Today the European Research Council (ERC) has made public which Starting Grants proposals were selected this year, for a total amount of €780m. Congrats to all recipients!
These include 14 grants for the PE1 panel in which I sat earlier this year for the fourth and final time. (The PE1 panel stands within the Physical Sciences and Engineering domain and covers pure maths, applied maths, mathematical foundations of computer science, mathematical physics, and statistics.) I have found the whole experience highly interesting, from getting a snapshot of on-going directions in the broad field (for topics I could understand) to interacting constructively with colleagues from different fields and cultures, to appreciating the clear protocols and instructions provided by the ERC and its highly efficient officers, if representing a significant time investment over these years.
This round of selections saw the return of UK applications, following the long-delayed agreement between the EU and the UK, with Warwick Thomas Berrett’s proposal among the winners. (Whose evaluation I obviously took no part whatsoever, following ERC rules governing conflicts of interest. Ditto for applications from PSL.)
