Probability Summer School

All participants are encouraged to make a poster presentation about their research work during the evening scientific session of the School.

Branching Processes with Reinforcement

In this minicourse we look at a class of stochastic processes with reinforcement, which includes urn models, preferential attachment networks with fitness, and genetic house-of-cards models. These processes can be described in terms of a class of general branching processes, often called Crump-Mode-Jagers processes. In the first part of the course I will explain the classical convergence theory of these processes under the assumption of existence of a Malthusian parameter. We will explore when this assumption is satisfied in our examples. In the second part I will present recent research (joint with Steffen Dereich and Cecile Mailler) exploring the interesting phenomena that may occur if this assumption fails.

Statistical Mechanics, Graphical Models And Message Passing Algorithms

Many problems of interest in computer science, information theory and statistics can be phrased in terms of a probability distribution over discrete variables associated to the vertices of a large graph. In recent years, considerable progress has been achieved by viewing these distributions as Gibbs measures and applying to their study heuristic tools from statistical physics. In this course, we will review this approach and provide some results towards a rigorous treatment of these problems.

Location

The School will take place at the Sobolev Institute of Mathematics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The postal address: 4 Acad. Koptyug avenue, 630090 Novosibirsk Russia.
The Institute is located in Akademgorodok, 30 km from Novosibirsk city centre.

Transportation

Public transport in Novosibirsk includes bus, minibus, tram and subway with fares varying between 20 and 50 RUB for a single journey.
Akademgorogok is situated 40 km from the Tolmachevo Airport (50-60 minutes by taxi, taxi price appr. 600 RUB, see e.g. http://novosibirsk.rutaxi.ru/en/index.html).

Accommodation

There's two options we can recommend:

The Golden Valley Hotel (Zolotaya Dolina). Hotel rates are 1800-2800 RUB per night. Building is located in the very heart of Akademgorodok, about 10 min walking distance from the Sobolev Institute of Mathematics
The hostel of NSU. Accommodation prices are essentially lower (to be announced later).

Leisure

Welcome party at the Sobolev Institute of Mathematics (Thursday, 18^th August)
A number of local excursions (to be finalised later).

Useful information

Climate:

August is generally sufficiently warm with average temperature around +20 °C. It may be rainy (see e.g. http://www.worldweatheronline.com/Novosibirsk-weather/Novosibirsk/RU.aspx).

Currency and Banks:

The currency unit in Russia is the Russian Ruble (RUB). Coins: 1, 2, 5 and 10 RUB. Notes: 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000 and 5000 RUB.
As of February 2016: USD 1 is appr. RUB 77, Euro 1 is appr. RUB 86 (see e.g. http://www.x-rates.com/). Foreign currency and traveller's cheques may be changed to rubles in banks offices located near the hotel (opening hours Monday-Friday from 9.30am to 1pm and from 2pm to 5pm).

VAT and Tipping:

VAT and tips are included in prices. It is not customary to tip taxi drivers.

Shopping:

Shops are usually open 7 days a week from 9am/10am to 7pm/9pm. Food stores are open until 10pm/11pm.

Electric appliances:

Electric appliances: the voltage in Russia is 220 AC (50 Hz).