Today, my (now former) PhD student Pierre Jacob defended his thesis in Paris-Dauphine. This is a superb thesis on computational Bayesian statistics with five papers accepted or in the process of being accepted, covering parallel MCMC (our joint paper in JCGS with Murray Smith), free energy sampler (with Nicolas Chopin, who was also involved in the thesis direction, published in Bayesian Statistics 9), Wang-Landau algorithms, both at the theory (with Robin Ryder, in revision for AAP) and algorithmic levels (with Luke Bornn, Arnaud Doucet and Pierre Del Moral in JCGS) and SMC² (with Nicolas Chopin and Omiros Papaspiliopoulos, to appear in Series B). This impressive range of results was accomplished in about two years and a half, thanks to a high level of autonomy and an intense involvment in the thestis, as well as a long visit to Vancouver (UBC) where he collaborated with Luke Bornn and Arnaud Doucet. My advisor role was thus more in re-reading papers and arranging trips abroad than in directing the research per se, at least at the daily level, which suited me perfectly! After a two-month visit in Perth this summer/winter, Pierre will soon move to Singapore for a postdoctoral year collaborating with Ajay Jasra (and presumably many others, given his ability to start new projects wherever he goes). Congratulations for the thesis and good luck for the future!
The next big’MC seminar in Paris will be delivered on Thursday, May 15, by
