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Three independent modules will take place. The modules are chaired by Prof. Erricos Kontoghiorghes and Prof. Ana Colubi. Details are provided below.

Dates: 10-12 December 2025.
Venue: Birkbeck, University of London, UK.

Further details will be provided in due course.

HiTEc offers the possibility of applying for grants (see below).

Probabilistic programming for statistical analysis in Julia

Presenters: Mattias Villani, Stockholm University, Sweden and TBA, University of Cambridge, UK.
Email: Contact

Dates: 10th December 2025.

Julia has emerged as an important language for statistical data analysis and machine learning. It is a high-level language that is easy to learn, but with a speed close to C/C++ from its just-in-time compilation. Despite its relatively young age, Julia already has an impressive set of libraries for statistics, and can be easily integrated with a workflow in R or Python.

This first half of this module introduces the Julia programming language with a focus on statistical analysis. The second half focuses on likelihood and Bayesian inference using the Turing.jl probabilistic programming ecosystem in Julia. Participants are encouraged to install Julia and some statistical packages before the tutorial, to follow along on their own laptops. More details with installation instructions will be posted as we approach the conference.

The following topics will be covered:

Part 1

• introduction to the Julia programming language
• the package manager and tooling
• statistical distributions
• optimization and automatic differentiation

Part 2

• probabilistic programming for statistical inference using Turing.jl

Bayesian variable selection

Presenter: Jim Griffin, UCL, UK.
Email: Contact

Dates: 11th December 2025.

The routine availability of large numbers of covariates for many data sets has led to interest in variable selection methods which find a subset of the covariates that explain the variation in the response. I will review Bayesian approaches to variable selection. These automatically provide a measure of model uncertainty through the posterior distribution, which is attractive as an alternative to choosing a best model according to some criterion. I will look at the basic ideas, the choice of prior distributions (which is key for effective variable selection), applications to linear, generalized linear, and nonlinear models, computational approaches, and methods to summarise the posterior distribution. The methods will be illustrated on a range of applications including biology, chemometrics, economics and finance, and a range of data set sizes from tens to thousands of covariates.

TBA.

Presenter: Sophie Dabo,University of Lille, France.
Email: Contact

Dates: 12th December 2025 (morning).

TBA.

Measure Transportation, Statistical Inference, and Time Series.

Presenter: Marc Hallin,Universite libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Email: Contact

Dates: 12th December 2025 (afternoon).

TBA.

Wednesday, 10 December 2023

• 09:00 - 10:30 Module I
• 10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break
• 11:00 - 13:00 Module I
• 13:00 - 14:30 Lunch break
• 14:30 - 16:00 Module I
• 16:00 – 16:30 Coffee break
• 16:30 – 18:30 Module I

Thursday, 11 December 2025

• 09:00 - 10:30 Module II
• 10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break
• 11:00 - 12:30 Module II
• 12:30 - 14:00 Lunch break
• 14:00 - 15:30 Module II
• 15:30 – 16:00 Coffee break
• 16:00 – 17:30 Module II

Friday, 12 December 2025

• 09:00 - 11:00 Module III
• 11:00 - 11:30 Coffee break
• 11:30 - 13:30 Module III
• 13:30 - 15:00 Lunch break
• 15:00 - 17:00 Module IV
• 17:00 – 17:30 Coffee break
• 17:30 – 19:30 Module IV

PhD students and young researchers, according to the COST definition (under 40 years), from eligible COST countries* can apply for a limited number of grants. The granted participants will be reimbursed a daily allowance of 190 euros per day plus travel expenses of up to 350 euros.

• In order to apply for the grants, candidates should submit their CV by e-mail to hiteccostaction@gmail.com.
• The selection of candidates will be made on the basis of the CV of the candidates and considering the COST inclusiveness criteria.
• Deadline for applications: 10th September 2025.
• Granted candidates will be informed by e-mail after the deadline and must send their flight tickets and registration 7 days after the notification to secure their grants. Otherwise, their grants will be revoked and assigned to other candidate.
• The granted candidates must attend all the sessions and sign the attendance list in order to obtain their grants.

*Eligible COST countries: Albania, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Republic of Moldova, Montenegro, The Netherlands, The Republic of North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Israel.

Organized by the HiTEc COST Action CA21163 with the collaboration of CFE-CMStatistics.

Sponsored by COST.

1. Log in to the registration tool of the HiTEc Winter Course 2025 to obtain the password. Only registered participants will have access.
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