News and Olds
- Jul 2024: UAI 2024 took place in Barcelona, Spain. Many thanks to all organizers and participants for enabling a great event!
- Apr 2024: Mijn presentatie Causaliteit en statistiek voor Leve de Wiskunde.
- Feb 2024: The Dutch newspaper NRC published an interview (in Dutch, behind a paywall) with me about my research.
- Feb 2024: The third Amsterdam Causality Meeting will take place on February 29th.
- Nov 2023: The second Amsterdam Causality Meeting will take place on November 23rd.
- Sep 2023: We are organizing a new seminar, the Amsterdam Causality Meeting. First edition will take place on October 9th!
- Sep 2023: Sourbh Bhadane joined my group as postdoc.
- Aug 2023: Best paper award for our UAI paper Establishing Markov equivalence in cyclic directed graphs. Embarassingly, after publication we discovered a serious mistake, which we luckily managed to fix. The fixed version is available on arxiv.org.
- Jun 2023: I gave a plenary talk on Causality and fairness at AIM2023, the second workshop on AI and Mathematics.
- Jun 2023: My inaugural lecture was published in Nieuw Archief voor Wiskunde.
- May 2023: Thijs van Ommen and I organized the SIKS Course on Causal Inference 2023.
- Apr 2023: Stéphanie van der Pas, Richard Post and I organized the YES Causal Inference workshop.
- Mar 2023: This work by my former PhD student Tineke Blom, Causality and Independence in Perfectly Adapted Dynamical Systems, has drastically changed my view on causality in complex systems. Bottom line: these systems can show a causal semantics that is more complex than we are used to in DAGs.
- Dec 2022: Delivered keynote presentation Towards Markov Properties for Continuous-Time Dynamical Systems at the NeuRIPS 2022 Workshop A Causal View on Dynamical Systems. In case you missed it, you can watch the recording.
- Oct 2022: Leihao Chen joined my group as PhD student.
- Oct 2022: After 2 years of COVID-related extensions, I will deliver my inaugural lecture as Professor of Mathematical Statistics. A live stream is also available.
- Aug 2022: Tineke presented her work Robustness of Model Predictions under Extension at UAI 2022.
- Jun 2022: Stephan Bongers successfully defended his PhD on Causal modeling & dynamical systems: A new perspective on feedback. Congratulations Stephan! A recording recording of the event is available, as is Stephan's PhD thesis.
- Nov 2021: After having worked on this for about 8 years, I am very glad that our paper Foundations of Structural Causal Models with Cycles and Latent Variables has finally been published!
- Nov 2021: Philip Boeken joined my group and the MMLL as a PhD student. He will work on causality-related topics in the context of applications that are relevant for booking.com.
- Sep 2021: Tineke Blom successfully defended her PhD on Causality and Independence in Systems of Equations and was awarded with the distinction cum laude. Congratulations Tineke! In case you missed it, the live stream is still available (though no longer live). Tineke's PhD thesis is also available.
- Aug 2021: In our recent JMLR paper we use Simon's causal ordering algorithm to derive a Markov property and causal interpretation for systems of equations that provides a more general framework than that offered by structural causal models. Our work sheds new light on the causal and probabilistic aspects of simple physical systems at equilibrium, like a bathtub with a constant inflow of water from a tap and a constant outflow of water through the drain, and provides a new perspective on causality beyond DAGs.
- Jul 2021: 2 PhD positions and 1 postdoctoral researcher position are available in my group.
- Jun 2021: The Mercury Machine Learning Lab, a collaboration between Booking.com, University of Amsterdam and TU Delft, has been launched.
- Jan 2021: We analyze the counter-intuitive behavior of perfectly adapted dynamical systems with the help of Simon's causal ordering algorithm, and discuss consequences for causal discovery in our latest preprint arXiv:2101.11885
- Oct 2020: In our recent UAI paper we proved that existing causal discovery algorithms, like PC and FCI, may work fine when applied on data from a system with feedback loops.
- June 2020: Our JMLR paper Joint Causal Inference from Multiple Contexts has been published (finally!).
- May 2020: Teodora Pandeva started as a new PhD student as part of the AI4Science initiative. She will work on causal discovery from gene expression data, supervised jointly by Leendert Hamoen (SILS), Martijs Jonker (SILS), Patrick Forré (IvI) and myself.
- February 2020: I was promoted to Professor of Mathematical Statistics at the Korteweg-de Vries Institute.
- September 2019: Patrick Forré was promoted to Assistant Professor. He will supervise 5 PhD students within the new AI4Science project.
- August 2019: I gave an extended tutorial on causality at MLSS 2019.
- June 2019: the AI4Science lab will be funded by FNWI.
- June 2019: Our two UAI submissions were both accepted.
- January 2019: Thijs van Ommen left my group to start a tenure track at the University Utrecht.
- October 2018: Noud de Kroon joined my group as PhD student.
- September 2018: Our NIPS submission on causal transfer learning was accepted.
- August 2018: I gave an extended tutorial on causality at MLSS 2018.
- July 2018: Together with Jonas Peters, I gave a tutorial on causality at the Microsoft Research AI Summer School 2018.
- May 2018: 3 (out of 5) UAI submissions from my group were accepted.
- April 2018: Position available in my group: PhD candidate in Reinforcement Learning, in collaboration with Microsoft Research Cambridge.
- November 2017: Sara Magliacane left my group to start a postdoc position at IBM Research.
- June 2017: Sara Magliacane successfully defended her PhD thesis.
- January 2017: I have been promoted to associate professor.
- January 2017: Sara Magliacane joined my group again, this time as a postdoc.
- September 2016: Tineke Blom joined my group as PhD student.
- July 2016: Our team won the CRM Causal Inference Challenge.
- June 2016: Patrick Forré joined my group as postdoc.
- April 2016: Tom Claassen joined my group as a guest researcher for 2.5 days in the week.
- April 2016: Our article Distinguishing Cause from Effect using Observational Data: Methods and Benchmarks got published in JMLR.
- January 2016: Thijs van Ommen joined my group as postdoc.
- July 2015: Release of approximate inference library libDAI 0.3.2.
- May 2015: Stephan Bongers joined my group as PhD student.
- July 2014: We organized the workshop Causal Learning: Inference and Prediction at UAI 2014.
- February 2015: My ERC Starting Grant proposal CAFES: Causal Analysis of Feedback Systems has been proposed for funding.
- January 2015: Sara Magliacane joined my group as PhD student.
- December 2014: Our recent preprint Distinguishing cause from effect using observational data: methods and benchmarks got slashdotted and posted on the Physics Arxiv Blog.
- December 2014: Philip Versteeg joined my group as PhD student.
- July 2014: Started my VIDI research project Causal Inference: Theory for Applications.
- February 2014: Nicholas Cornia started as the first PhD student in my group.
- February 2014: Completed the VENI research project Cyclic Causal Discovery for Reconstructing Biological Regulatory Networks.
- April 2013: Started my new job as Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam.