Inference Group Reunion

Reunion of David MacKay's Inference Group

Darwin College, 13 March 2016

09:30-11:00 Casual family brunch (with partners & kids)

11:00-11:15 Welcome from Martin Jones (Vice Master) & Alan Blackwell

11:15-12:30 talks I (less technical), chair Oliver Stegle

• Jossy Sayir (Teaching with David)
• Sanjoy Mahajan (21st-century instructional design: Task-centered instruction)
• Mark Gibbs (How to waste your PhD in an investment bank)
• Keith Vertanen (Eyes Free Text Entry)
• Matt Davey(Trading in Nanoseconds)

12:30-14:30 Lunch break

14:30-15:30 talks II (scientific), chair Brendan Frey

• Philipp Hennig (Probabilistic Numerics)
• Steve Gull (Bayes, MaxEnt and Thermodynamics)
• David Stern (Machine Learning in Go and the Stock Market)
• Hanna Wallach (Poisson Tensor Factorization for International Relations)

15:30-16:00 tea break

16:00-17:00 talks III (scientific), chair Iain Murray

• Ryan Adams (Performing Inference with Biomolecules)
• Alan Lawrence (A Simple Inference at Google Scale)
• Alex Selby (Solving the Eternity Puzzle)
• Seb Wills (Building a distributed calculation engine)
• Edward Ratzer (Machine learning competitions)

17:10-18:00 Music in the dining hall

• Graeme Mitchison (piano) and Helen Arnold (soprano)
• Darwin College Music Society (vocal group)
• Christian Steinruecken (piano and voice)
• Jossy Sayir (saxophone) and Elizabeth Blackwell (guitar)

19:00 for 19:30 Dinner, preceded by drinks.