- SIPTA News - lists.sipta.org

Next SIPTA seminar: 12th December 15h Paris time, Frederic Pichon on information fusion
by sdesterc 04 Dec '24

04 Dec '24

Dear colleagues, We are delighted to announce our upcoming SIPTA online seminar on imprecise probabilities (IP). These monthly events are open to anyone interested in IP, and will be followed by a Q&A and open discussion. They also provide an occasion for the community to meet, keep in touch and exchange between in-person events. The next seminar will take place on the 12th of December (Thursday). The zoom link for this seminar is https://utc-fr.zoom.us/j/88087921468 For this new seminar, we are very happy to have Frédéric Pichon as our speaker. Frédéric Pichon is Professor of Computer Science at Université D’artois, in the LGI2A. Frédéric is a widely recognised expert in belief functions, with interest in combinatorial optimisation, information fusion and machine learning. On the 12th of December, at 15:00 CEST:paris time (up to 17:00 CEST, with a talk duration of 45min/1h), he will talk about "Reliability and dependence in the combination of evidence”. Curious? Then check out the abstract on the webpage of the SIPTA seminars: sipta.org/events/sipta-seminars. The zoom link for attending the seminar can be found on that same page. So please mark your calendars on the 12th of December, and join us for the occasion. And for those who missed the previous seminar and want to catch up, or simply want to see it again and again, it is online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqZhJ6QL4x0&t See you at the seminar! Sébastien, Enrique and Jasper

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Invitation to the EpImp Concluding Conference: 18–19 December 2024, Bristol
by Van Camp, Arthur 29 Nov '24

29 Nov '24

Dear Imprecise Probability Enthusiast, We are delighted to invite you to the EpImp Concluding Conference, the final event of the ERC-funded project 'Epistemic Utility for Imprecise Probability'. This conference will take place on 18 and 19 December 2024 in Bristol, UK. We are thrilled to announce an outstanding lineup of speakers, with presentations scheduled as follows: Wednesday, 18 December 09:00–10:15: Francesca Zaffora Blando 10:30–11:45: Branden Fitelson 13:00–14:15: Jason Konek & Giacomo Molinari 14:30–15:45: Gregory Wheeler 16:00–17:15: Gert de Cooman Thursday, 19 December 09:00–10:15: Matthias Troffaes 10:30–11:45: Catrin Campbell-Moore 13:00–14:15: J. Dmitri Gallow 14:30–15:45: Kevin Blackwell & Arthur Van Camp 16:00–17:15: Kevin Dorst Further details are available on our conference website: https://ep-imp.gitlab.io/concluding-conference-2024/. Registration This event is open to everyone interested in imprecise probabilities. Registration is free of charge, and we will provide lunch and coffee to all registered participants. To secure your place, please complete the following form by 7 December: https://doodle.com/sign-up-sheet/participate/3f234fc0-a397-4150-86f0-cddc2f…. Speakers do not need to complete this form. Venue The conference will be held at the Wills Memorial Building, Queens Rd, Bristol BS8 1QE, United Kingdom. You can find the location here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=51.45636&mlon=-2.60456#map=18/51.45636/…. Accommodation recommendations For proximity to the venue, we recommend the following accommodations: - The Berkeley Square Hotel (https://cliftonhotels.com/bristol-hotels/berkeley-square) - The Clifton Hotel Bristol (https://cliftonhotels.com/bristol-hotels/clifton-bristol-city-centre) - The Washington Guesthouse Bristol (https://cliftonhotels.com/bristol-hotels/washington) If you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to welcoming you to Bristol this December! Warm regards, The EpImp Team: Jason Konek (Chair of the Organising Committee) – jason.konek(a)bristol.ac.uk<mailto:jason.konek@bristol.ac.uk> Kevin Blackwell Giacomo Molinari Arthur Van Camp

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Fwd: CFP - IJCRS 2025
by Stefania Boffa 27 Nov '24

27 Nov '24

Dear Colleagues, Let me share the CFP of the *11th International Joint Conference on Rough Sets (*IJCRS 2025 <http://ijcrs2025.cqupt.edu.cn/#/home>*) *with you*.* Best wishes Stefania Boffa IJCRS 2025 Publicity Chair

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CNRS positions open (16 total in the two computer science committees)
by sdesterc 23 Nov '24

23 Nov '24

Dear (young) colleagues, As every year, CNRS (and INRIA) is opening nation-wide positions in every field of science (for CNRS, INRIA focuses mostly on computer science and applied mathematics). For most people here, this would mean positions available in Philosophy, Economy, Mathematics and Computer Science, but maybe others. Those positions are permanent and full-time research positions, with a lot of flexibility in how you manage your time and activities. CNRS candidates typically have to produce a summary of past research and a research project for the next 5-10 years, and give three teams or laboratory (these have to be joint research units, but there are such research units in many places in France). For computer science, the official website is there: https://www.ins2i.cnrs.fr/en/cnrsinfo/researchers-competition-2025-list-pos… And you can fetch some useful info there: https://mathurinm.github.io/cnrs_inria_advice/ In computer science, recruited candidates are typically young researchers, i.e., having less than 7-8 years of research experience since the beginning of the PhD thesis (but there can be exceptions). This may change if you want to apply, e.g., in economy or philosophy, as every field has its particularities. If you wish to apply, you should try to identify and contact ASAP a laboratory in France where you would like to work (e.g., by just looking up in which laboratory is your favourite French researcher working), and contact them. Laboratories that have people dealing with imprecision in uncertainty or that would be interested in candidates working in these fields include mine, but also the CRIL (Lens), IRIT (Toulouse), GREGHEC and LAMSADE (Paris), and a couple others! Deadline for applications are beginning of January, but putting up a good application file takes quite some time and efforts. I can try to reply to your possible questions if you have some. However, I will mostly have information about the committees and processes concerned with computer science, automatic, robotic, signal treatment, machine learning and uncertainty propagation. Best Sébastien

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Next SIPTA seminar: 22nd November 3pm Paris Time. Jason Konek on philosophy and decision making
by sdesterc 19 Nov '24

19 Nov '24

Dear Siptians, We are delighted to announce our upcoming SIPTA online seminar on imprecise probabilities (IP). These monthly events are open to anyone interested in IP, and will be followed by a Q&A and open discussion. They also provide an occasion for the community to meet, keep in touch and exchange between in-person events. The next seminar will take place on the 22nd of November (Friday). The zoom link for this seminar is https://utc-fr.zoom.us/j/85974092076 For this new seminar, we are very happy to have Jason Konek as our speaker. Jason Konek is currently Senior Lecturer at the philosophy department of Bristol University. Jason Konek had many contribution in the philosophy of imprecise probabilities, and has notably been awarded a prestigious ERC Grant “Epistemic Utility for Imprecise Probability” to pursue his work on this topic. On the 22nd of November, at 15:00 Paris time (up to 17:00 CEST, with a talk duration of 45min/1h), he will talk about "Bringing philosophy and IP into conversation: Puzzles and challenges for decision theory”. Curious? Then check out the abstract on the webpage of the SIPTA seminars: sipta.org/events/sipta-seminars. The zoom link for attending the seminar can be found on that same page. So please mark your calendars on the 22nd of November, and join us for the occasion. And for those who missed the previous seminar and want to catch up, or simply want to see it again and again, it is online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GToHUaaIzjc&t=681s See you at the seminar! Sébastien, Enrique and Jasper

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REC 2026: mark your calendars, imprecise probabilities are one of the highlighted topics
by Kreinovich, Vladik 14 Nov '24

14 Nov '24

The 11th International Workshop on Reliable Engineering Computing REC 2026 will be heled in Dortmund, Germany, on September 2-4, 2026 (dates are tentative) REC2026 will provide a multi-disciplinary forum to bring together various engineering and associated disciplines with the common focus on methodologies and theories in the field of risk and uncertainty. As in the previous biennial REC-meetings, the central theme of the discussions will be the reliability of engineering computations. Covering a broad range of topics, REC2024 aims to address the urgent need for innovative theories and advanced computational approaches to ensure safety of engineering systems starting with uncertainty quantification of input parameters. Topics include but are not limited to: * Uncertainty analysis and modeling * Reliability analysis * Risk analysis * Reliability-based design * Performance-based design * Risk-informed decision-making * Sustainability and resilience * Risk and hazard mitigation * Optimization under uncertainty * Inverse problems * Model reduction * Surrogate models * System and parameter identification * Structural health monitoring * Reliability analysis * Risk analysis * Reliability-based design * Performance-based design * Risk-informed decision-making * Sustainability and resilience * Risk and hazard mitigation * Optimization under uncertainty * Inverse problems * Model reduction * Surrogate models * System and parameter identification * Structural health monitoring Methods and theories may include: * Probability theory * Stochastic approaches * Bayesian theory * Fuzzy set theory * Imprecise probabilities * Evidence theory * P-box approach * Fuzzy probability theory * Interval analysis * Fuzzy analysis * Convex modeling * Information gap theory * AI and Machine Learning Contributions are invited with emphasis on both theory and applications. Previous REC-meetings have been hosted: * at Georgia Tech Savannah (United States) in 2004, 2006, and 2008, * at the National University of Singapore in 2010, * at Brno University of Technology in Brno (Czech Republic) in 2012, * at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago (United States) in 2014, * at Ruhr University Bochum (Germany) in 2016, * at Liverpool University (United Kingdom) in 2018, * online in 2021 (due to COVID-19 pandemic), * at Tsinghua University in Beijing (China) in 2024. Contacts: * Matthias Fass matthias.faes(a)tu-dortmund.de<mailto:matthias.faes@tu-dortmund.de> * Michael Beer beer(a)irz.uni-hannover.de<mailto:beer@irz.uni-hannover.de>

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I: [CISPA-Researchers] Guest talk by Michele Caprio (University of Manchester) on 19 Nov at 1400.
by Michele Caprio 12 Nov '24

12 Nov '24

Of possible interest for someone in the SIPTA community 🙂 Yours, Michele ________________________________ Da: Siu Lun Chau <siu-lun.chau(a)cispa.de> Inviato: martedì 12 novembre 2024 10:53 A: researchers(a)lists.cispa.saarland <researchers(a)lists.cispa.saarland> Cc: Michele Caprio <michele.caprio(a)manchester.ac.uk> Oggetto: [CISPA-Researchers] Guest talk by Prof Michele Caprio (University of Manchester) on 19 Nov at 1400. Dear CISPA Researcher, You are cordially invited to Michele Caprio's (University of Manchester) research talk next Tuesday at 2 p.m. in D2 room 1.01. The talk is also available on Zoom [cispa-de.zoom-x.de]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://cispa-de.zoom-x.de/my/muandet__;!!PDiH4…>. Title: Optimal Transport for Epsilon Contaminated Credal Set Talk Abstract: We provide a version for lower probabilities of Monge's and Kantorovich's optimal transport problems. We show that, when the lower probabilities are the lower envelopes of ε-contaminated sets, then our version of Monge's, and a restricted version of our Kantorovich's problems, coincide with their respective classical versions. We also give sufficient conditions for the existence of our version of Kantorovich's optimal plan, and for the two problems to be equivalent. As a byproduct, we show that for ε-contaminations the lower probability versions of Monge's and Kantorovich's optimal transport problems need not coincide. The applications of our results to Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are also discussed. Bio: Michele is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at The University of Manchester. He obtained his PhD in Statistics from Duke University, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Computer and Information Science of the University of Pennsylvania. His general interest is probabilistic machine learning, and in particular the use of imprecise probabilistic techniques to investigate the theory and methodology of uncertainty quantification in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Recently, he won the IJAR Young Researcher and the IMS New Researcher Awards, and he was elected a member of the London Mathematical Society. P.S. Michele is visiting our group for a week, so if anyone is interested in learning about his amazing work on imprecise probabilistic machine learning, feel free to reach out and set up a meeting. Best, Siu Lun Chau --- Siu Lun (Alan) Chau, Ph.D (Oxon) | Postdoctoral Researcher CISPA - Helmholtz Center for Information Security Stuhlsatzenhaus 5, 66123 Saarbrücken, +44 7415137484 | siu-lun.chau(a)cispa.de | https://chau999.github.io/ [chau999.github.io]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://chau999.github.io/__;!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!G…>

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PhD Position at The University of Manchester in the area of Uncertainty in Machine Learning
by Michele Caprio 07 Nov '24

07 Nov '24

PhD Position at The University of Manchester in the area of Uncertainty in Machine Learning The UKRI AI CDT in Decision Making for Complex Systems<https://www.ai-decisions-cdt.ac.uk/> — joint between The University of Manchester and the University of Cambridge — has an open position for a PhD student in Manchester. The PhD research's more specific area is Imprecise Probabilistic Machine Learning. The research focuses on developing a new Multimodal Learning paradigm based on the notion of Credal Sets. This project allows for doing both fundamental and applied research, with the aim of advancing and bridging both theory and applications. The candidate should hold a master's degree in mathematics, computer science, statistics, or a related field. Further details about this position, and a link to the application system, can be found at https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/multimodal-credal-learning-theory/?p1… For further information, please contact Michele Caprio (michele.caprio(a)manchester.ac.uk<mailto:michele.caprio@manchester.ac.uk>).

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First Announcement: 14th International Symposium on Imprecise Probabilities (ISIPTA 2025) - Bielefeld
by Alexander Erreygers 17 Oct '24

17 Oct '24

We are excited to announce that the 14th International Symposium on Imprecise Probabilities: Theories and Applications (ISIPTA 2025) will be held at the Bielefeld University Center for Interdisciplinary Research from Tuesday, July 15, 2025, to Friday, July 18, 2025. ISIPTA is the premier international event dedicated to the exploration of imprecise probabilities, providing a platform for both theoretical advancements and practical applications. We invite contributions on all aspects of imprecise probabilities, a term encompassing a wide range of mathematical and statistical models that quantify uncertainty without the restriction of precise probabilities. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, sets of probability measures, partial preference orderings, game-theoretic probability, choice functions, interval probabilities, risk measures, nonlinear expectations, belief functions, and possibility theory. The symposium will feature both contributed sessions and keynote talks from leading experts in the field. Keynote speakers are • Carole Bernard (Grenoble École de Management & Vrije Universiteit Brussel) • Itzhak Gilboa (Hautes Études Commerciales de Paris) • Peter Grünwald (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica & Leiden University) • Jan Obłój (University of Oxford) The deadline for full paper submissions is February 2nd, 2025. More information about submission will follow in due course. For further details, please visit the conference website: https://isipta25.sipta.org/home . We look forward to welcoming you to Bielefeld! The ISIPTA 2025 Steering Committee Jasper De Bock Sébastien Destercke Alexander Erreygers Max Nendel Frank Riedel Matthias Troffaes

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I: OASIS talk next Friday: Michele Caprio - Imprecise Probability in Machine Learning
by Michele Caprio 16 Oct '24

16 Oct '24

Of possible interest for someone in the SIPTA community 🙂 Yours, Michele ________________________________ Da: Paolo Perrone <paolo.perrone(a)cs.ox.ac.uk> Inviato: lunedì 14 ottobre 2024 10:08 A: talk-announce(a)cs.ox.ac.uk <talk-announce(a)cs.ox.ac.uk>; Rob Cornish <rob.cornish(a)stats.ox.ac.uk>; Kaushik Chintam <k.chintam(a)se23.qmul.ac.uk>; Michele Caprio <michele.caprio(a)manchester.ac.uk> Oggetto: OASIS talk next Friday: Michele Caprio - Imprecise Probability in Machine Learning Hi all, The OASIS seminar is back! (https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/seminars/oasis/ [cs.ox.ac.uk]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/seminars/oasis/__;!!PDi…>) This Friday at 2 PM AM in Lecture Theatre A we are going to have an OASIS talk by Michele Caprio (University of Manchester), titled "Imprecise Probabilistic Machine Learning: Being Precise About Imprecision". The abstract is below. Before the talk some of us are planning to have lunch with the speaker. If you are interested in joining us, please let me know by Thursday morning. The talk is also accessible remotely, at the following Zoom link: https://cs-ox-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/99562853810?pwd=VmJFUlhNbVJwOUpjTE5hUk9LUkMvU… [cs-ox-ac-uk.zoom.us]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://cs-ox-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/99562853810?pwd=V…> Meeting ID: 995 6285 3810 Passcode: 983333 For further information see the following links, https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/seminars/oasis/ [cs.ox.ac.uk]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/seminars/oasis/__;!!PDi…> https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/seminars/2688.html [cs.ox.ac.uk]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/seminars/2653.html__;!!…> All the best, Paolo --- Speaker: Michele Caprio (University of Manchester) Title: Imprecise Probabilistic Machine Learning: Being Precise About Imprecision Abstract: This talk is divided into two parts. I will first introduce the field of “Imprecise Probabilistic Machine Learning”, from its inception to modern-day research and open problems, including motivations and clarifying examples. In the second part, I will present some recent results that I've derived on Imprecise Markov Processes. I will introduce the concept of an imprecise Markov semigroup Q. It is a tool that allows to represent ambiguity around both the initial and the transition probabilities of a Markov process via a compact collection of plausible Markov semigroups, each associated with a (different, plausible) Markov process. I will use techniques from geometry, functional analysis, and (high dimensional) probability to study the ergodic behavior of Q. I will show that, if the initial distribution of the Markov processes associated with the elements of Q is known and invariant, under some conditions that also involve the geometry of the state space, eventually the ambiguity around their transition probability fades. I call this property ergodicity of the imprecise Markov semigroup, and I will relate it to the classical notion of ergodicity. I will present ergodicity when the state space is Euclidean or a Riemannian manifold. The importance of my findings for the fields of machine learning and computer vision will also be discussed. This talk is based on the following work, https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00081 [arxiv.org]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.00081__;!!PDiH4ENfjr…>, where I also extend the results to the case where the state space is an arbitrary measurable space.

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