PhD offer M/F : Post-selection inference for latent variable models

Updated: about 2 months ago
Location: Toulouse, MIDI PYRENEES
Job Type: FullTime
Deadline: 18 Mar 2025

26 Feb 2025
Job Information
Organisation/Company

CNRS
Department

Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse
Research Field

Mathematics
History » History of science
Researcher Profile

First Stage Researcher (R1)
Country

France
Application Deadline

18 Mar 2025 - 23:59 (UTC)
Type of Contract

Temporary
Job Status

Full-time
Hours Per Week

35
Offer Starting Date

1 Oct 2025
Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme?

Not funded by a EU programme
Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure?

No

Offer Description

The PhD student will be located at the Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse (IMT). The thesis will be supervised jointly by François Bachoc and Juliette Chevallier (Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse). The PhD project will be funded by the QHTHY project involving industrial actors. The selected PhD student will have the option (non-mandatory) to attend workshops with these industrial actors and to address real data sets from the QUTHY project. The thesis will last three years, starting on October 1, 2025.

Classical inference tools, in particular hypothesis tests and confidence intervals, can dramatically fail when applied to data-driven statistical models. Post-selection inference refers to a set of recent research works that design and analyze statistical methods tailored to these data-driven models. In particular, [3] addresses Gaussian linear models and [2] provides extensions to non-linear non-Gaussian settings, based on asymptotic arguments.
The goal of the PhD project is to extend post-selection inference to latent variables models. These models have become the method of choice in a wide range of applications [4, 6, 8] and are the object of many recent contributions [1, 5]. Nevertheless, post-selection inference guarantees are currently missing for them, while model selection often takes place in practice [7, 9].
This extension, relying on [2], will necessitate to obtain uniform joint central limit theorems for parameter estimators with latent variables. Also, from a computational point of view, parameter estimation will be performed thanks to the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithms and their extensions. This will also necessitate mathematical developments to account for the post-selection inference context.

[1] P. Abry, J. Chevallier, G. Fort, and B. Pascal. Pandemic intensity estimation from stochastic approximation-based algorithms. In 2023 IEEE 9th International Workshop on Computational Ad- vances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing (CAMSAP), pages 356–360. IEEE, 2023.
[2] F. Bachoc, D. Preinerstorfer, and L. Steinberger. Uniformly valid confidence intervals post-model- selection. The Annals of Statistics, 48(1):440–463, 2020.
[3] R. Berk, L. Brown, A. Buja, K. Zhang, and L. Zhao. Valid post-selection inference. The Annals of Statistics, pages 802–837, 2013.
[4] D. M. Blei. Build, compute, critique, repeat: Data analysis with latent variable models. Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, 1(1):203–232, 2014.
[5] J. Chevallier, V. Debavelaere, and S. Allassonniere. A coherent framework for learning spatiotemporal piecewise-geodesic trajectories from longitudinal manifold-valued data. SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences, 14(1):349–388, 2021.
[6] B. Everett. An introduction to latent variable models. Springer Science & Business Media, 2013.
[7] S. Lotfi, P. Izmailov, G. Benton, M. Goldblum, and A. G. Wilson. Bayesian model selection, the marginal likelihood, and generalization. In International Conference on Machine Learning, pages 14223–14247. PMLR, 2022.
[8] B. O. Muth ́en. Beyond SEM: General latent variable modeling. Behaviormetrika, 29(1):81–117, 2002.
[9] Y.-Q. Zhang, G.-L. Tian, and N.-S. Tang. Latent variable selection in structural equation models.
Journal of Multivariate Analysis, 152:190–205, 2016.


Where to apply
Website
https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Candidat/Offre/UMR5219-ISAGUI-004/Candidater.aspx

Requirements
Research Field
Mathematics
Education Level
Master Degree or equivalent

Research Field
History
Education Level
Master Degree or equivalent

Languages
FRENCH
Level
Basic

Research Field
Mathematics
Years of Research Experience
None

Research Field
History » History of science
Years of Research Experience
None

Additional Information
Additional comments

We are seeking for candidates with a degree in mathematics, with a specialization in probability, statistics, machine learning or applied mathematics. Solid theoretical skills are expected.


Website for additional job details

https://emploi.cnrs.fr/Offres/Doctorant/UMR5219-ISAGUI-004/Default.aspx

Work Location(s)
Number of offers available
1
Company/Institute
Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse
Country
France
City
TOULOUSE
Geofield


Contact
City

TOULOUSE
Website

http://www.math.univ-toulouse.fr

STATUS: EXPIRED

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