Dear all, we are glad to announce the following *online*  seminar *April  16, 2024,  12:15 PM* Zoom: https://unive.zoom.us/j/85153268624?pwd=MzBhdlA2M1B2dThJQ2Y5T0EwUE5PZz09 *Speaker*: Francesca Romana Crucinio, King's College London *Title*: A connection between Tempering and Entropic Mirror Descent *Abstract:* This talk explores the connections between tempering (for Sequential Monte Carlo; SMC) and entropic mirror descent to sample from a target probability distribution whose unnormalized density is known. We establish that tempering SMC corresponds to entropic mirror descent applied to the reverse Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence and obtain convergence rates for the tempering iterates. Our result motivates the tempering iterates from an optimization point of view, showing that tempering can be seen as a descent scheme of the KL divergence with respect to the Fisher-Rao geometry, in contrast to Langevin dynamics that perform descent of the KL with respect to the Wasserstein-2 geometry. We exploit the connection between tempering and mirror descent iterates to justify common practices in SMC and derive adaptive tempering rules that improve over other alternative benchmarks in the literature. Notes: 1) Visit this page https://www.unive.it/pag/41970/ for updates on our seminars. 2) I also take this opportunity to draw your attention to the following academic position Senior Tenure-Track Assistant Professor (RTDB) in Statistics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy Application Deadline: May 02, 2024 1:00pm (Italian Time) More information about the call (in Italian and English) can be found at https://www.unive.it/data/38002/?id=2024-UNVE000-0078551 Online application form https://apps.unive.it/domandeconcorso-en/accesso_cf/rtdb-2024secss01psr Informal enquiries about the job and the application process can be made to Professor Cristiano Varin cristiano.varin@unive.it Best regards, Carlo Gaetan -- - Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Informatica e Statistica - DAIS Università Ca' Foscari - Venezia Z.A12 - Edificio Zeta Via Torino, 155 I-30172 Mestre (VE) ITALY phone: ++39 041 234 8404 e-mail:[gaetan"at"unive"dot"it] web:[http://www.dais.unive.it/~gaetan] Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. Please avoid sending me Word, Excel or PowerPoint attachments. Seehttp://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html. Per favore non stampate questo messaggio se non è proprio necessario. Per favore non mandatemi allegati in Word, Excel o PowerPoint. Le ragioni sono spiegate quihttp://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.it.html