Applications for the PhD and MSc programs in statistics at UBC are now open! 📆 Deadline for PhD program is December 1st 📆 Deadline for MSc program is January 5th The department covers all areas of statistics and we have a lot of momentum in Bayesian computation!

Application for a postdoc research fellowship in computational mathematics at the Flatiron Institute in New York are now open! apply.interfolio.com/173401 📆 Deadline is December 1st. 🔭 This is an excellent place to do research at the interface of ML, stats and the natural sciences.

My paper with Loucas Pillaud-Vivien and Lawrence Saul, “Variational Inference for Uncertainty Quantification: An Analysis of Trade-offs”, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Machine Learning Research. 📃 arxiv.org/abs/2403.13748 🧵 1/

Stan v2.37 has been released! blog.mc-stan.org/2025/09/02/r...

Yes, in principle, I start at UBC Statistics today. But right now, I'm running around the Frankfurt airport to catch my flight to Vancouver .... 🏃‍♂️🧳✈️ www.stat.ubc.ca/news/charles...

Earlier this month, I taught at the summer school on "cryptography, statistics and machine learning" (mathschool.ysu.am) hosted by Yerevan State University in Armenia 🇦🇲 🙏 Thank you to the organizers for putting together such a wonderful event! I truly enjoyed interacting with the students.

New manuscript by Nawaf Bou-Rabee, Bob Carpenter, Tore Kleppe and Sifan Liu on the WALNUTS algorithm which improves of the NUTS sampler by introducing a locally adaptive step size. 📜 Paper: arxiv.org/pdf/2506.18746 💻 Code: github.com/bob-carpente...

🇸🇬 Next stop: Singapore for BayesComp'25 (bayescomp2025.sg) The organizers put together a wonderful program! I'll be: 🪑 chairing the session on "Parallel comp for MCMC" 🎙️ speaking at the session on "Advances in VI" Looking forward to meeting researchers and catching up with colleagues.

Research opportunity for a graduate student in ecology 🌳 at UBC 🇨🇦 with Lizzie Wolkovich and the Temporal Ecology lab (temporalecology.org). 📝 Apply here: temporalecology.org/joining-the-... by July 1st 2025! The abstract sounds fascinating (see attached).

🧑‍💻 Candidate release for Stan 2.37 is out: discourse.mc-stan.org/t/cmdstan-st.... Lots of exciting features to try out, including: - embedded/integrated Laplace approximation - new constrained types (e.g. sum_to_zero_matrix) - built-in constraint transformations exposed

Taking our Models Seriously (my talk at StanBio Connect, this Friday 9am) statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/05/27/t...

✨ Thank you #AISTATS for the best paper award!! 📜 arxiv.org/abs/2410.11067 💡What does VI learn and under what conditions? The answer lies in symmetry. 🤝 Honored to share this award with my co-author Lawrence Saul from @flatironinstitute.org

🇹🇭 Just arrived in Phuket, Thailand for #AISTATS 2025. 📃 I'll presenting my recent work with Lawrence Saul on Variational Inference in Location-Sacale Families: arxiv.org/abs/2410.11067 DM if you are in town and want to connect at the conference!

For the first time, Journal-to-Conference papers have entered the schedule of #AISTATS2025 🎉 To celebrate here is a bingo card: should you be among the first to meet all of our amazing Journal-to-Conference presenters (I need proof!), I’ll buy you a drink... provided that you can find me too!

📚 Putting together a reading list for #AISTATS 2025. I already found a few very good papers, and I'm curious to hear about more accepted publications.

📣 Nominations for the Stan Governing Body are open for another two weeks. Calling on all members of the Stan community to consider this role. 🔗 discourse.mc-stan.org/t/elections-... 💡 A post about my own experience: statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/03/15/e...

I'm thrilled to share that, starting this summer, I will continue my academic journey as an assistant professor of statistics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Full statement here: charlesm93.github.io/files/letter...

🚀 Exciting news! We're proposing a new *Bayesian Deep Learning* section within @isba-bayesian.bsky.social . If you support this initiative, add your name to the petition and help make it happen! 🔗 Petition: tinyurl.com/527vaamz Sinead Williamson, Theo Papamarkou @vincefort.bsky.social Sara Wade 1/2

📣 Calling all members of the Stan community to action! ❕We're renewing the Stan Governing Body. This is a fantastic way to contribute to the project. The SGB co-organizes StanCon and related events, funds developers, and helps set the directions of the project. 🧵 Link in thread.

StanConnects are a series of one-day online conferences for the application of Stan to specific areas. This year, we're kicking off with Stan for biology (broadly defined), co-organized by @ericnovik.bsky.social and @vianeylb.bsky.social, on 30 May '25!! stanbio.org

Yesterday, an undergraduate asked me whether I used the same tools as 3blue1brown to animate my slides. Maybe one of the coolest compliments I've ever gotten :) ... and excellent reason to share my appreciation for this beautiful channel: www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown.

@flatironinstitute.org released recordings of the FWAM meeting, a 2-day event during which experts present introductory talks on computational and scientific methods. www.simonsfoundation.org/event/2024-f... I had the pleasure to give a talk on: "For how many iterations should we run MCMC?"

Our paper "Batch, match, and patch: low-rank approximations for score-based variational inference" is accepted to #AISTATS2025. This paper addresses score-based variational inference with Gaussians (batch and match VI) with low rank + diagonal covariances. Preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2410.22292

Our paper was accepted (oral) for #AISTATS. From the AC: "This paper provides a very elegant analysis of variational inference in location-scale families, providing much-needed insights into when and why variational methods can so often accurately obtain accurate means estimates."

Kicking off the year with a visit to the Center for AI Fundamentals at the University of Manchester 🇬🇧 Thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to exchange ideas!

🎙️ Andrew Gelman and I were interviewed by James Rogers from Metrum Research Group (metrumrg.com)! 📝 We spoke about our BAYESIAN WORKFLOW paper (arxiv.org/abs/2011.01808) and its application to pharmacometrics. 📽️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BNV... Thank you Metrum for the invitation!!

A poster at #NeurIPS2024 with everything I like: - Amortized inference - Pareto-smoothed importance sampling - MCMC using many chains This work provides a progressive complexification of the inference to control computation. Work by Luigi Acerbi and colleagues: openreview.net/pdf?id=pKZp2...

Come by our #NeurIPS2024 spotlight poster on EigenVI: score-based variational inference with orthogonal function expansions! Friday 7:30pm, East Exhibit Hall A-C #3900 Link: arxiv.org/abs/2410.24054

🇨🇦 Next stop: Vancouver for #NeurIPS2024! 🏃‍♂️Ready to learn, share, discuss, connect and reconnect!! 💡 My favorite part: meeting researchers and exchanging ideas, so please DM if you want to chat! 📜 Presenting our latest paper on Variational Inference

Heading to #NeurIPS2024 next week to present EigenVI: score-based variational inference with orthogonal function expansions Link: arxiv.org/abs/2410.24054 Poster: Friday 7:30pm, East Exhibit Hall A-C #3900

Applications to our Research Fellow position at @flatironinstitute.org CCM are closing soon on Dec 15! It's a great place for doing fundamental ML research with a lot of freedom, in the heart of NYC. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/155357

Generating cat videos is nice, but what if you could tackle real scientific problems with the same methods? 🧪🌌 Introducing The Well: 16 datasets (15TB) for Machine Learning, from astrophysics to fluid dynamics and biology. 🐙: github.com/PolymathicAI... 📜: openreview.net/pdf?id=00Sx5...

Running Markov Chain Monte Carlo on Modern Hardware and Software by Sountsov, Carroll, and Hoffman, showing some new performance benchmarks. arxiv.org/abs/2411.04260