Greek Stochastics γ

Crete, Greece, 30 May - 1 June 2011

   
©Marc Baguelin

Following the success of previous years (\alpha & \beta), the third edition of the Greek Stochastics Meeting will take place in Crete, Greece, in  May 30-31, June 1 2011. 

The meeting's primary aim is to facilitate a broad discussion of current research themes related to Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. The  workshop will consist of

• Three short courses by Gareth O. Roberts, Krzysztof Latuszynski and Alex Beskos; see below for more information.

• A limited number of contributed talks.

• Poster presentations.

To register for the meeting please

fill in the registration form available here until the 30th of March 2011.

You can also apply for an oral or poster presentation using the same application form. For oral presentations we are particularly interested in theory and methodology for MCMC. Notification of acceptance will be sent out by the 7th of April 2011. As the total number of contributed talks may be somewhat limited,  it is advised to apply as soon as possible. 

NOTE: Although there is no more room for contributed talks, it should not be a problem to fill the above application form in, even at this stage, if you want to participate in the meeting.

If you have any questions please contact us by email at grstoch@gmail.com

Organising / Scientific Committee    Programme       Location/Accommodation        Travel            Important Dates        Registration

The three short courses will be given by :

• Gareth Roberts (University of Warwick) on "Theory of MCMC".

• Krzysztof Latuszynski (University of Warwick) on "Adaptive MCMC".

• Alex Beskos (University College London) on  "Scaling of MCMC and SPDEs".

• David Spiegelhalter on "Communicating risk and uncertainty: from football to climate change"

Some confirmed contributed talks include:

• Petros Dellaportas (Athens University of Economics and Business) on "Control variates for MCMC".

• Omiros Papaspiliopoulos (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) on "SMC^2: A sequential Monte Carlo algorithm with particle MCMC updates".

• Anthony Lee (University of Oxford) on  "Pseudo-marginal approaches and extensions for MCMC".
  

Organising/Scientific committee:

• Nikos Demiris (Agricultural University of Athens),

• Kostas Kalogeropoulos (London School of Economics),

• Theo Kypraios (University of Nottingham),

• Michalis Linardakis (University of Crete),

• Omiros Papaspiliopoulos (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Other members of the Greek Stochastics Team

• Alex Beskos (University College of London),

• Petros Dellaportas (Athens University of Economics and Business),

• Eleni Giannoulatou (University of Oxford)

• Ioannis Kontoyiannis (Athens University of Economics and Business)
   

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Programme:

Talks will start on Monday the 30th after lunch. The programme of the workshop can be downloaded from here.

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Location

• The conference will take place in the city of Rethimnon at the main amphitheatre of the Department of Preschool Education, University of Crete.
   
• A limited number of rooms is available at the Olympic Palladium hotel  at 30 euros per night (single room with buffet breakfast). Participants wishing to stay in this hotel are advised to contact the hotel directly. The rooms have wired (and not wi-fi) internet connection. If you want to take advantage of it, remember to bring a cable!

• University accommodation: A limited number of rooms handled by the local Univeristy is available at 26 euro (single) including breakfast. They are located in the old town of Rethinmon, next to the port, have traditional Cretan style with interior yards and sea view (some info can be found here, in greek). If interested, please indicate it in the registration form. 
  NOTE: There are not any more rooms left.
  
   
• In addition, there are many hotels in the town of Rethimnon that can be found through search-engines, we recommend the following:
  

  • Braskos hotel
  • Bio suites hotel
  • Leo hotel

• People who wish to attend the workshop are strongly advised to book as early as possible.  

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Travel

• How to get to Crete: There are direct flights from Athens to Heraklion airport.  In addition, there is a large number of charter flights getting to Heraklion.
   

• How to get to Rethimnon:

  1. From Heraklion airport go the Bus station next to the port. There are regular bus services from the airport to the port and the journey is less than ten minutes. Alternatively, one may get a taxi.
  2. Take a bus to Rethimnon (typically signposted "Chania"). There are regular services, roughly once every hour running from 05:30 to 21:00. The schedule is subject to change in May due to high season period, so please check at http://www.ktelherlas.gr. The journey lasts about an hour.
     
     
• How to get to the University: From the town of Rethimon to the University, where the workshop will take place, there are regular bus services (from several bus stops) every 5-10 minutes.
  
  
• Some interesting local tourist destinations are:
  

  1. Agios Pavlos beach
  2. Preveli beach 
  3. Matala
  4. Elafonisi island
  5. Samaria gorge
  6. Phalasarna
     

Registration:

• 50 Euros

• Registration fees will be paid on the first day of the workshop.

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Important dates:

• Abstract submission deadline: 30 March 2011

• Notification for abstract acceptance: 7 April 2011.

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