Scientific Calendar Event



Description
An ICTP meeting in person

Driven by the growth of applications in MCMC methods, machine learning and high-dimensional statistics, the field of mixing times has registered a number of recent breakthroughs of both theoretical and applied interest. This conference aims to bring together researchers with diverse perspectives on this topic. 

The focus of the conference will be on mixing properties of random systems, namely, timescales and phenomena occurring while reaching their equilibrium state. Examples of these systems include, among others, random walks in random environment and interacting spin systems.
 
Beyond the theoretical interest, a profound understanding of the mixing behavior of high-dimensional systems have immediate implications on the development of efficient sampling algorithms, which serve as a base tool to approach provably hard combinatorial problems.
 
Despite a remarkable effort made in the last decades, a satisfying general theory encompassing all observed phenomenologies is still lacking. One major open problem is that of developing a framework to explain the dynamical phase transition – known as “cutoff phenomenon” – exhibited by a number of high-dimensional processes.


Topics
  • Theory of Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods
  • Efficient sampling
  • Random walks in random environment
  • Interacting particle systems
  • Concentration of measure
  • Phase transitions
 
Mini-course Speakers
P. Sousi, Cambridge, UK
A. Stauffer, King's College London, UK

Regular Speakers
Z. Baran, Université Paris-Dauphine, FR
A. Caraceni, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy
Z. Chen, GeorgiaTech, USA
S. Chewi, Yale, USA
A. Cipriani, University College London, UK
B. Dubail, KTH, Sweden
D. Elboim, Princeton, USA
W. Feng, The University of Hong Kong, China
S. Ganguly, Berkeley, USA
N. Gantert, TUM, Germany
I. Hartarsky, CNRS / Lyon 1, France
K. Liu, MIT, USA
E. Nestoridi, Stony Brooks, USA
G. Perarnau, UPC, Spain
A. Sarkovic, Cambridge, UK
D. Schmid, Columbia, USA
A. Shapira, MAP5, France
A. Sly, Princeton, USA
C. Toninelli, CNRS/Paris Dauphine, France
 
Grants: A limited number of grants are available to support the attendance of selected participants, with priority given to participants from developing countries. There is no registration fee.
Go to day
  • Monday, 5 May 2025
    • 09:30 - 18:30
      • 09:30 Registration 1h0'
        Upon arrival, Visitors not staying in the ICTP Guest Houses, are kindly requested to complete registration formalities at the Adriatico Guest House (Lower Level). The Registration Desk will be open from 09.30 to 10.30
      • 10:30 Coffee Break 50'
      • 11:20 Welcome Remarks 10'
        Speaker: Federico SAU (University of Milan), Matteo QUATTROPANI (Sapienza University of Rome)
      • 11:30 Shuffling via transpositions 45'
        Speaker: Evita NESTORIDI (Stony Brook University, USA)
      • 12:15 Mixing times for the open ASEP 45'
        Speaker: Domink SCHMID (University of Augsburg, Germany)
      • 13:00 Lunch Break 1h30'
      • 14:30 Mixing of a random walk on a randomly twisted hypercube 45'
        Speaker: Andjela SARKOVIC (University of Cambridge, UK)
      • 15:15 Phase transition for random walks on graphs with an added weighted random matching 45'
        Speaker: Zsuzsanna BARAN (University of Cambridge, UK)
      • 16:00 Poster session and 'Get together' drink 2h30'
  • Tuesday, 6 May 2025
    • 09:30 - 18:00
      • 09:30 Random walk: cover time and geometry of the uncovered set - Part I 1h30'
        Speaker: Perla SOUSI (University of Cambridge, UK)
      • 11:00 Coffee Break 30'
      • 11:30 Rapid phase ordering for Ising dynamics on random graphs 45'
        Speaker: Allan SLY (Princeton University, USA)
      • 12:15 Critical level set percolation for the GFF in high dimensions: intrinsic geometry and random walk 45'
        Speaker: Shrishendu GANGULY (UC Berkeley, USA)
      • 13:00 Lunch Break 1h30'
      • 14:30 Cutoff for mixtures of permuted Markov chains 45'
        Speaker: Bastien DUBAIL (KTH, Sweden)
      • 15:15 Growing random geometries and mixing: from making trees blossom to making quadrangulations flip 45'
        Speaker: Alessandra CARACENI (Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa, Italy)
      • 16:00 Coffee Break 30'
      • 16:30 The spectrum of dense kernel-based random graphs 45'
        Speaker: Alessandra CIPRIANI (University College London, UK)
      • 17:15 Topology and time scales in spin O(N) models 45'
        Speaker: Assaf SHAPIRA (Université Paris Cité, France)
    • 18:30 - 20:30
      • 18:30 Welcome Reception 2h0' ( Adriatico Guest House - Cafeteria )
        All Participants are cordially invited to the Welcome Reception
  • Wednesday, 7 May 2025
    • 09:30 - 14:30
      • 09:30 Mixing time of random walks on dynamic graphs - Part I 1h30'
        Speaker: Alexandre STAUFFER (King's College London, UK)
      • 11:00 Group Photo 5'
      • 11:05 Coffee Break 25'
      • 11:30 Consensus and disagreement in opinion dynamics 45'
        Speaker: Nina GANTERT (TU Munich, Germany)
      • 12:15 Averaging processes on graphs with random initial opinions 45'
        Speaker: Dor ELBOIM (Stanford University, USA)
      • 13:00 Lunch Break 1h30'
  • Thursday, 8 May 2025
    • 09:30 - 17:15
      • 09:30 Random walk: cover time and geometry of the uncovered set - Part II 1h30'
        Speaker: Perla SOUSI (University of Cambridge, UK)
      • 11:00 Coffee Break 30'
      • 11:30 Synchronisation in random DFA via random words 45'
        Speaker: Guillem PERARNAU (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)
      • 12:15 A local error framework for KL divergence via shifted composition 45'
        Speaker: Sinho CHEWI (Yale University, USA)
      • 13:00 Lunch Break 1h30'
      • 14:30 Strong spatial mixing for colorings on trees and its algorithmic applications 45'
        Speaker: Kuikui LIU (MIT EECS, USA)
      • 15:15 New Rapid Mixing Results for Hardcore Model 45'
        Speaker: Zongchen CHEN (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
      • 16:00 Coffee Break 30'
      • 16:30 Cores on lattices 45'
        Speaker: Ivailo HARTARSKY (Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France)
  • Friday, 9 May 2025
    • 09:30 - 12:30
      • 09:30 Mixing time of random walks on dynamic graphs - Part II 1h30'
        Speaker: Alexandre STAUFFER (King''s College London, UK)
      • 11:00 Coffee Break 30'
      • 11:30 Faster mixing of the Jerrum-Sinclair chain 45'
        Speaker: Weiming Feng (The University of Hong Kong, China)
      • 12:15 Closing Remarks 15'