School of Mathematics

Davey Fitch Lecture

The annual Davey Fitch Lecture will return with a lecture from Prof. Arnaud Doucet, a Professor of Statistics at the University of Oxford. Prof. Doucet will discuss how the mathematical sciences and industry have shaped his career over the past three decades. This event will take place on 4 November, 2pm-3pm, followed by a coffee reception. This event will be held in-person at 50 George Square Room G.06 with Prof. Doucet presenting virtually.

Details of registration can be found here.

Abstract

An Unlikely Journey

I will discuss how mathematical sciences, industry (and many random events) have shaped my academic career over the past three decades. Starting from the French countryside and a PhD in Electronic Engineering on "Predictive monitoring of neutron sensors", this long and highly unlikely journey will take us to countries on four continents. I will illustrate how industry problems have been a constant source of inspiration for my research. Very early on, I developed a long-standing interest in stochastic filtering while working in a nuclear research centre. This subsequently motivated me not only to work in many applied domains such as robotics, computer vision and epidemiology but also led me to far away destinations. The journey is not yet over.After having moved from engineering to statistics, my association with DeepMind has reshaped my research agenda and I will discuss some of my recent machine learning work on generative modelling and uncertainty quantification.