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François-Xavier Briol

@fxbriol.bsky.social
4.2K followers 453 following 34 posts

Professor of Statistics and Machine Learning at UCL Statistical Science. Interested in computational statistics, machine learning and applications in the sciences & engineering.

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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Taking place today!
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
The UCL IMSS Annual Lecture will take place on the 27th April with a keynote from @lestermackey.bsky.social. The theme is 'Computational Statistics and Machine Learning' and we'll have talks from Alessandro Barp, Paula Cordero Encinar & Po-Ling Loh. imss2026.github.io @statisticsucl.bsky.social
imss2026.github.io
IMSS Lecture 2026
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Reposted by François-Xavier Briol
Xing Liu @xingliu97.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
Robust goodness-of-fit test with kernels -- now out in JMLR! jmlr.org/papers/v26/2... - Existing kernel-based goodness-of-fit tests are not necessarily robust. We explain why in the paper. - We propose a simple yet provably robust extension. Joint work with @fxbriol.bsky.social
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
The recording of my talk on 'Multilevel neural simulation-based inference' at the 'One World Approximate Bayesian Inference' seminar series is now available on YouTube. Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBWd...
youtube.com
François-Xavier Briol: Multilevel neural simulation-Multilevel neural simulation-based inference
YouTube video by ISBA - International Society of Bayesian Analysis
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
I’ll be giving a talk on a recently accepted NeurIPS paper at the next OWABI seminar on Thursday. The talk will cover simulation-based inference and how you can enhance accuracy when you have cheap approximate simulators at hand.
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Thanks Robin! And of course your very nice review of ABC was very helpful (and can be found in the references for those interested!).
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Thanks for the interest! I'll send you a separate copy without the breaks via email, but I don't think it'll be better because I tend to make various parts of the slide appear/disappear, so removing breaks will make things look very messy.
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Just finished delivering a course on 'Robust and scalable simulation-based inference (SBI)' at Greek Stochastics. This covered an introduction to SBI, open challenges, and some recent contributions from my own group. The slides are now available here: fxbriol.github.io/pdfs/slides-....
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Today is the day of the pre-ICML event at UCL! Come check out the exciting work from academics, industry researchers, postdocs and PhD students from around London: sites.google.com/view/pre-icm... @statisticsucl.bsky.social @ucl-csml-ellis.bsky.social
sites.google.com
Pre ICML @ London 2025
The goal of this meetup is to bring together students, researchers, and engineers from the greater London area to discuss machine learning research presented at International Conference on Machine Lea...
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Reposted by François-Xavier Briol
Pierre Alquier @pierrealquier.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
I'll give a talk at the BayesComp workshop on 'Bayesian Computation and Inference with Misspecified Models' Tuesday. Come and say "hi!" if you are attending BayesComp! Workshop website and schedule: postbayes.github.io/BayesMisspec...
postbayes.github.io
BayesComp Satellite Workshop on Bayesian Computation and Inference with Misspecified Models
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Arthur Gretton @arthurgretton.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Composite Goodness-of-fit Tests with Kernels, now out in JMLR! www.jmlr.org/papers/v26/2... Test if your distribution comes from ✨any✨ member of a parametric family. Comes in MMD and KSD flavours, and with code. @oscarkey.bsky.social @fxbriol.bsky.social Tamara Fernandez
jmlr.org
Composite Goodness-of-fit Tests with Kernels
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Looking forward to the pre-ICML event at UCL on the 3rd July: sites.google.com/view/pre-icm.... Registration and the call for talks/posters are now open!
sites.google.com
Pre ICML @ London 2025
The goal of this meetup is to bring together students, researchers, and engineers from the greater London area to discuss machine learning research presented at International Conference on Machine Lea...
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Reposted by François-Xavier Briol
UCL Mathematical & Physical Sciences @uclmaps.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
New review funded by @genomicsengland.bsky.social & led by Dr Brieuc Lehmann & PhD student Leandra Brauninger (@statisticsucl.bsky.social) explores how the analytical methods used to process & interpret #genomic #data play a critical role in promoting #health #equity: www.ucl.ac.uk/mathematical...
ucl.ac.uk
New review on statistical and machine learning tools to advance equity in genomic research
Review led by Dr Brieuc Lehmann and PhD student Leandra Brauninger (both UCL Statistical Science) explores how the analytical methods used to process and interpret genomic data play a critical role in...
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Reposted by François-Xavier Briol
European Commission @ec.europa.eu · 08/05/2025
Choose Science. Choose Europe. A new Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 call is now open. With a budget of €404.3 million, it will support around 1,650 researchers from Europe and beyond. Apply by 10 September → europa.eu/!fBTMgF
A graphic for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), showing a historical portrait of Marie Skłodowska-Curie overlaid with an image of four young researchers walking down a hallway. The European Commission logo is in the top left. Text reads: "Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions – €404.3 million to support postdoctoral researchers”
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Well done again to @hudsonchen.bsky.social on his very first ICML paper! 😎
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Surprisingly, @hudsonchen.bsky.social was able to prove a very fast convergence rate! He showed an interpolation rate whereas it was previously believed that only a much slower noisy regression rate was feasible! 🤯 This improves on our prior work: arxiv.org/abs/2406.16530 and all competing methods.
arxiv.org
Conditional Bayesian Quadrature
We propose a novel approach for estimating conditional or parametric expectations in the setting where obtaining samples or evaluating integrands is costly. Through the framework of probabilistic nume...
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Our paper remedies the problem with a very simple algorithm which is a nesting of two kernel quadrature algorithms. This provably reduces the number of samples needed to obtain a given accuracy when the problem isn't too high dimensional and smooth.
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Unfortunately, existing methods such as nested Monte Carlo or multilevel Monte Carlo require a huge number of samples at each level of nesting to estimate these accurately! ☹️
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
Why should you care? Nested expectations are a significant computational challenge in stats/ML: they arise in active learning, Bayesian optimisation, experimental design, but also other fields such as option pricing and health economics.
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
New ICML 2025 paper: Nested expectations with kernel quadrature. We propose an algorithm to estimate nested expectations which provides orders of magnitude improvements in low-to-mid dimensional smooth nested expectations using kernel ridge regression/kernel quadrature. arxiv.org/abs/2502.18284
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Huge congrats to William Laplante (williamlaplante.github.io) on his first paper, completed in the first few months of his PhD! And thanks to all collaborators including @maltamiranomontero.bsky.social, Andrew Duncan and Jeremias Knoblauch.
williamlaplante.github.io
William Laplante
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
The paper builds on the robust and scalable Gaussian process (RCGP) algorithm from our ICML 2024 paper (arxiv.org/abs/2311.00463). It shows that it can make use of common computational tricks in spatio-temporal settings, and also uses adaptive hyper parameter optimisation to improve calibration.
arxiv.org
Robust and Conjugate Gaussian Process Regression
To enable closed form conditioning, a common assumption in Gaussian process (GP) regression is independent and identically distributed Gaussian observation noise. This strong and simplistic assumption...
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
New ICML 2025 paper: Robust Spatio-Temporal GP Regression! We propose a new GP method with linear-in-time cost that is provably robust to outliers. Unlike competitors, our method is fully conjugate and requires no expensive variational inference! 📄 arxiv.org/abs/2502.02450
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
If you are at AISTATS this week, check out our paper on cost-aware simulation-based inference!
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Reposted by François-Xavier Briol
Ayush Bharti @ayushbharti.bsky.social · 02/05/2025
"Cost-aware simulation-based inference" is accepted at AISTATS 2025. Check out our poster #205 on Sunday May 4th in Hall A-E if you are in Phuket. Finland's rising star @huangdaolang.bsky.social will be there to assist you :D arxiv.org/abs/2410.07930 @fxbriol.bsky.social @samikaski.bsky.social
arxiv.org
Cost-aware simulation-based inference
Simulation-based inference (SBI) is the preferred framework for estimating parameters of intractable models in science and engineering. A significant challenge in this context is the large computation...
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Thanks Pierre! I think it could be quite handy for MMD-Bayes and MMD estimators :).
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Ever used kernel mean embeddings or MMD? Wished you had a closed-form expression so you wouldn't need to estimate these? See our new paper with Alex Gessner, Toni Karvonen and Maren Mahsereci, which comes with an associated Python package. arxiv.org/abs/2504.18830
arxiv.org
A Dictionary of Closed-Form Kernel Mean Embeddings
Kernel mean embeddings -- integrals of a kernel with respect to a probability distribution -- are essential in Bayesian quadrature, but also widely used in other computational tools for numerical inte...
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Reposted by François-Xavier Briol
Serge Belongie @serge.belongie.com · 03/04/2025
So far, 2,135 people have responded to the poll Søren and I posted a few days ago. Of those, 94.4% replied “Yes” to being interested in officially presenting accepted @neuripsconf.bsky.social papers in Europe. (1/7)
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
We also have excellent line-up of invited speakers which includes @pierrealquier.bsky.social, @eweinstein.bsky.social, Jeremias Knoblauch, David Frazier, Harita Dellaporta, Antonietta Mira, Jeremie Houssineau, Sonia Petrone, Edwin Fong and Aretha Teckentrup.
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
The BayesComp workshop on 'Bayesian Computation and Inference with Misspecified Models' will take place in Singapore on the 16-17th June. We have an open call for posters/contributed calls, with a deadline on the 1st May. More details on the website: postbayes.github.io/BayesMisspec...
postbayes.github.io
BayesComp Satellite Workshop on Bayesian Computation and Inference with Misspecified Models
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Reposted by François-Xavier Briol
Sam Power @spmontecarlo.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
JOB OPENING at University of Bristol: -- Lecturer in Statistics or Machine Learning -- (x 2 positions available) -- application deadline: 31 March, 2025 Details at www.bristol.ac.uk/jobs/find/de... Come join us!
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Approximate Bayes Seminar @approxbayesseminar.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
Our next talk will be on Thursday the 27th February at 11am UK time. Our next speaker is Ayush Bharti (Aalto University), who will talk about "Cost-aware simulation-based inference". To receive the link, sign up here: listserv.csv.warwick...
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UCL Department of Statistical Science @statisticsucl.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
We are very pleased to announce the Bloomsbury Probability Colloquium, an afternoon of research talks in Probability hosted by the probability group at UCL. Date and time: Friday 21st March 2025, 2-5PM Venue: UCL, Department of Statistical Science, room 115, 1-19 Torrington Place, London
sites.google.com
Probability at UCL - Colloquium_2025
Friday 21 March 2025, 2-5PM UCL, 1-19 Torrington Place, lecture room 115
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
My collaborator @ayushbharti.bsky.social will be presenting our recently accepted AISTATS paper on 'cost-aware simulation-based inference' at the next One World ABI Seminar on the 27th February. Full details of the seminar series: warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/stat... arXiv paper: arxiv.org/abs/2410.07930
warwick.ac.uk
One World ABI Seminar
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
Excited to announce we are organising a two-day workshop on 'Bayesian Computation and Inference in Misspecified Models' at BayesComp 2025! Registrations are now open, with a very nice lineup of speakers to be announced soon! bayescomp2025.sg @isba-bayesian.bsky.social
bayescomp2025.sg
Bayes Comp 2025
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
UCL and Imperial have an exciting new joint PhD programme on scientific computing and machine learning. Deadline for applications is 15th January. More details here: ccmi-cdt.org
ccmi-cdt.org
How to apply – CCMI
EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Colllaborative Compuational Modelling at the Interface
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
The Bloomberg fellowship will fund the next two years of Matias' PhD at @statisticsucl.bsky.social, where he is co-supervised by Jeremias Knoblauch and I. More details about Matias: maltamiranomontero.github.io
maltamiranomontero.github.io
Matías Altamirano
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
His work to date shows how to make change-point detection, Gaussian process regression and Kalman filtering all robust to outliers at essentially no additional computational cost. proceedings.mlr.press/v202/altamir... proceedings.mlr.press/v235/altamir... proceedings.mlr.press/v235/duran-m...
proceedings.mlr.press
Robust and Scalable Bayesian Online Changepoint Detection
This paper proposes an online, provably robust, and scalable Bayesian approach for changepoint detection. The resulting algorithm has key advantages over previous work: it provides provable robustn...
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
Huge congratulations to @maltamiranomontero.bsky.social for being awarded a prestigious Bloomberg Data Science fellowship! Matias has been doing some outstanding work on making Bayesian statistics and machine learning more robust and scalable. www.bloomberg.com/company/stor...
bloomberg.com
Introducing the Seventh Cohort of Bloomberg Data Science Ph.D. Fellows (2024-2025) | Bloomberg LP
Bloomberg announces the three Bloomberg Data Science Ph.D. Fellowship recipients for 2024-2025, making an early investment in their careers.
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Thanks to @statisticsucl.bsky.social for supporting this!
statisticsucl.bsky.social
UCL Department of Statistical Science (@statisticsucl.bsky.social)
UCL Statistical Science was the first university statistics department in the world when founded in 1911. Methodological & applied statistics. Fun place to work https://www.ucl.ac.uk/statistics/
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
Our event on 'Computational Statistics and Machine Learning in the sciences' is taking place tomorrow at the London Mathematical Society. Our stellar line-up includes Harita Dellaporta, Jason McEwen, Ziheng Yang, Ziheng Yang, Marta Betcke, and Sam Livingstone. Details: www.ucl.ac.uk/data-science/
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International Society for Bayesian Analysis @isba-bayesian.bsky.social · 28/11/2024
The ISBA election is now complete! Thanks to all the candidates for their willingness to work with ISBA and to those who cast their votes. A complete list of newly elected officers, including ISBA Sections, is available at bayesian.org/9857-2/ (click on the title to get to the pdf)
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Maike Osborne @maosbot.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Apply now for this Associate Professorship in Oxford (Engineering Science/Keble College)! Particularly good for experts on Digital Twins (modelling, trust, in-the-loop simulation, world models), but generic ML/CV/robotics is also in scope. D/L 27 Jan—please share! my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
my.corehr.com
Job Details
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Alexander Terenin @avt.im · 21/11/2024
I made a starter pack for machine learning researchers working on Bayesian optimization and Gaussian processes! It's *very* sparse ATM since the migration is still in progress. Please reply to make me aware of people - potentially yourself - who should be added to it! go.bsky.app/QYMEQ52
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
👋
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Maike Osborne @maosbot.bsky.social · 20/11/2024
Excitingly, there are enough of us on here now to form a Probabilistic Numerics starter pack! If you are a numerical problem—watch out, because we are coming for you go.bsky.app/3aztgSz
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Martin Trapp @trappmartin.eurosky.social · 20/11/2024
For those who don’t know yet, I am organising an online talk series together with Arno Solin on “Advances in Probabilistic Machine Learning (APML)”. It’s free for everyone to join and support early career researchers! You can register and check out the schedule here: aaltoml.github.io/apml/
aaltoml.github.io
Seminar on Advances in Probabilistic Machine Learning
This seminar series aims to provide a platform for young researchers (PhD student or post-doc level) to give invited talks about their research, intending to have a diverse set of talks & speakers on ...
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Martyn Plummer @martynplummer.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Jeremias Knoblauch (UCL) is advertising a new "Post-Bayesian" online seminar series which looks very interesting. I don't think he has an account here yet so I've copy-pasted the advert from his Twitter account below.
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
Looking forward to attending this!
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François-Xavier Briol @fxbriol.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
The next UCL centre for Data Science/UCL ELLIS unit event will be on "Computational Statistics and Machine Learning in the Sciences" will take place in-person on the 5th December at the London Mathematical Society. Full details, incl registration: www.ucl.ac.uk/big-data
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