The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, has a new cover, a new colour and a new co-editor. As can be seen from the above shots, the colour is now a greenish ochre, with a picture of pedestrians on a brick plaza as a background, not much related to statistical methodology as far as I can tell. More importantly, the new co-editor for the coming four years is Piotr Fryzlewicz, professor at the London School of Economics, who will share the burden with Ingrid van Keilegom professor from UCL (Louvain-la-Neuve) who is now starting her third year… My friend, colleague and successor as Series B editor Gareth Roberts is now retiring after four years of hard work towards making Series B one of the top journals in Statistics. Thanks Gareth and best wishes to Ingrid and Piotr!
Archive for Louvain-la-Neuve
Series B news
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags academic journals, Gareth Roberts, Ingrid van Keilegom, JRSSB, Louvain-la-Neuve, LSE, Piotr Fryzlewicz, Royal Statistical Society, Series B, UCL, University of Warwick on January 24, 2014 by xi'anMCQMC2014 in Belgium
Posted in Books, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags ABC, Belgium, KU Leuven, Leuven, Louvain-la-Neuve, MCQMC2014, Monte Carlo methods, quasi-Monte Carlo methods, simulation, tutorial on October 11, 2013 by xi'an
The conference MCQMC2014 (which stands for Monte Carlo and Quasi-Monte Carlo) will take place in Leuven, Belgium, on April 6-11. More exactly, in the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, which is the Flemish-speaking side of the split (1968) Catholic University of Leuven, the French speaking side Université Catholique de Louvain being located in Louvain-la-Neuve. After missing MCQMC2012 in Sydney, I will attend this conference where I give an invited talk (on ABC, what else..?!). As it happens (and kind of logically), I have visited Louvain-la-Neuve many times, especially in the previous era where historical Bayesians Michel 
Mouchard, Jean-Marie Rolin and Léopold Simar were together in the Statistics department—two of them contributing to the highly formalised “Elements of Bayesian Statistics” that I perused during my PhD thesis in Rouen—, but I have never been to Leuven or to KU Leuven,
A great item of news is that one of the two tutorials (on April 6, 2014) will given by Art Owen, the theme being “ANOVA, global sensitivity, Sobol’ indices and all that“, The second tutorial is by Mike Giles (Oxford) on his approach of multi-level Monte Carlo methods. (If the organisers follow the MCQMC2012 trend, the Sunday afternoon tutorials should follow one another.)
ISBA, the other one…
Posted in Statistics, University life with tags Belgium, ISBA, Louvain-la-Neuve, postdoctoral position on December 18, 2012 by xi'anI often get emails from ISBA that leave me confused until I realise they are from the “other” ISBA, namely the Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. Here is one such call for a postdoctorant:
The Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA) at the Université catholique de Louvain opens up a PhD position and a postdoc position in the framework of an Interuniversity Attraction Pole Programme (IAP-Belgian Science Policy).
The Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA, http://www.uclouvain.be/isba) is a renowned research centre of high international reputation which offers a very stimulating working environment. Around 30 pre- and postdoctoral researchers are working under the supervision of 10 full-time professors, in a variety of fields of methodological and applied statistics, including biostatistics and actuarial sciences.
The ISBA is currently working on the IAP project _’Developing crucial statistical methods for understanding major complex dynamic systems in natural, biomedical and social sciences_’ and is searching candidates with interest and experience in:
– The study of associations and dependencies in complex systems
– The study of different dynamics in complex systems
– Multivariate modelling and hierarchically structured data
– Dynamics of a stochastic system and the impact of non-observed characteristics
– Variable and model selection and the study of (ultra-)high dimensional data
The candidate (PhD) will also be involved on a small scale into some teaching activities of the institute. *Deadline for application:* February 1, 2013.
