OWABC is dead, long life OWABI! After 5 seasons of the One World Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) Seminar, launched in April 2020 (!) to gather members and disseminate results and innovation during those weeks and months under lockdown, the organisers (incl. yours truly) have now decided to launch a “new” seminar series, the One World Approximate Bayesian Inference (OWABI) Seminar, to better reflect the broader interest and scope of this series, which goes beyond ABC. With Bluesky, X, and Linkedin accountsWith Bluesky, X, and Linkedin accounts. In particular, simulation-based inference and ML related techniques will play a crucial role. We are also pleased to announce that Stefan Radev has joined the OWABI Organiser Team.
The first OWABI talk will be given on Thursday the 31st October at 11am UK time. The speaker is Ullrich Koethe (University of Heidelberg), who will talk about
“Free-form flows for physics-informed generative modeling”
Abstract: The talk first introduces a useful categorization of the (sometimes confusing) “generative model zoo” in terms of different change-of-variables formulas. It then shows how normalizing flows, a major architecture for generative neural networks, can be used for simulation-based Bayesian inference in the sciences. Finally, it proposes free-form flows to simplify the incorporation of physical prior knowledge, e.g. rotation and translation invariance or the restriction of the distribution to a manifold, into generative models.
Keywords: normalizing flows; physical-informed neural networks; simulation-based inference
I am quite surprised that the NobAIl committee did not select 
