[quick call] Postdoc position in theoretical machine learning @ Inria Lille, France

[Daniil Ryabko]

A postdoc position is offered at Inria Lille, in collaboration with CWI, Amsterdam.
The successful applicant will work with Daniil Ryabko at Inria and other members of the SequeL team, and will collaborate
with Peter Grünwald and his group at CWI, Amsterdam, spending  a significant portion of  time in Amsterdam.

Application Deadline: 25/08/2015
Duration: initially 16  months; extensions possible
Starting date: October, 2015



The topic is non-parametric sequential prediction.
The topic belongs to the areas of machine learning and (extremely) nonparametric statistics. The central theme of this topic is to explore which regularities are "learnable" from sequential data.
Specifically, this general question is considered for the problem of probability forecasting, that is, predicting the probabilities of future outcomes of a series of events given the past. The question to be addressed is: under which assumptions on the stochastic mechanism generating the data is it possible to give forecasts whose error becomes negligible as more data becomes available? Here we specifically allow for the possibility that the predictions are based on a model that is `wrong yet useful', i.e. it does not contain the data generating mechanism. In this 'nonrealizable' or 'misspecified' case, the question becomes: under what conditions it is possible to give forecasts that converge to the best available ones as more data becomes available?

Questions of this kind find applications in a variety of fields, such as finance, data compression, bioinformatics, environmental sciences,  and many others. However, the research topic is mainly about theoretical foundations rather than applications.


Background papers: paper1 (Ryabko), paper2 (Ryabko), paper3 (Grünwald/van Ommen)

The successful applicant will have a strong mathematical background with and Ph.D. in mathematics, computer science or statistics.

To apply, please contact Daniil dot Ryabko at inria.fr with  [postdoc] in the subject line, attaching a CV, a cover letter specifying
why you are interested in the topic, and 1-2 of your most important papers. Recommendation letter(s) can be useful as well.




About Inria and the job

Established in 1967, Inria is the only public research body fully dedicated to computational sciences. Combining computer sciences with mathematics, Inria’s 3,500 researchers
with 350 working at the Inria  centre in Lille.

Lille is only 1h away from Paris, 34min from Brussels and 1h30 from London -  all by train.

Benefits: Possibility of French courses, Help for housing, Financial support from Inria to catering and transportation expenses, Scientific Resident card and help for visa, Catering service

Monthly salary approx. 2 600 EUR  (social security included)

About CWI:

CWI is the national research institute for mathematics and computer science in the Netherlands, located in Amsterdam. It conducts pioneering research in these fields and transfers its results to society. With 55 permanent research staff, 40 postdocs and 70 PhD students, CWI is a compact institute that lies at the heart of European research in mathematics and computer science. It was the birthplace of the European internet and was home to the invention of the popular programming language Python. CWI is located within easy biking distance from the centre of one of Europe's most beautiful, lively and international cities.