Essec Business School

With Pierre Jacob

A major congratulations to Pierre Jacob, a 2024 laureate of the European Research Council Consolidator Grant! 

This grant offers 2 million euro over a five-year time period. Dr. Jacob was one of 347 winners out of 2262 applicants for his project “Markov Chain Monte Carlo using couplings toward scalable statistical inference”. His project will explore how to develop a statistical toolbox for approximating probability distributions in data analysis, using modern computing architectures. The starting point of the project is a mathematical object called a coupling, which describes the relationship between two random variables. The project builds upon his previous work to turn these couplings into computational engines with the aim of solving open problems in data analysis.

“This project is to help scientists and decision-makers to make the most of their data and of their expertise. To do this, I will develop new algorithms that mitigate the computational cost of modern data analysis. This ERC will fund a team of doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers over five years, and will help to nurture international collaborations. The project includes applied work in collaboration with epidemiologists, econometricians and biostatisticians, who routinely wrestle with computational challenges, sometimes running computers for weeks or months to obtain the results of their data analysis. The objective is that they can extract more meaningful, more reliable information from data, using less time and fewer resources.

This success would not have been possible without the support of my colleagues at ESSEC, and in particular the very active Data Analytics group in the Department of Information Systems, Data Analytics and Operations, who helped me to prepare the ERC application,” notes Dr. Jacob. 

With its focus on data science and improving computational technology, Dr. Jacob’s project is aligned with ESSEC’s new Transcend strategy. This is ESSEC’s first ERC grant and one of 38 received in France, marking a major milestone and recognition of ESSEC’s research excellence.

About the European Research Council 

The European Research Council (ERC) is a branch of the European Union, dedicated to coordinating research efforts between EU member states. As part of Horizon Europe, it is the main pan-European funding organism, dedicated to research at the cutting edge of knowledge. The ERC finances exploratory, innovative research in all domains of science and technology - the only criteria for inclusion is scientific excellence. The projects offer the laureate the possibility to develop the research program of their choice and to form a research team. 

The ERC offers different grants for researchers according to their level of experience and the type of project. The Consolidator Grant is for researchers with 7-12 years of experience and an excellent scientific track record.

About Dr. Pierre Jacob 

Pierre Jacob is a professor of statistics at ESSEC Business School. He develops methods for statistical inference, time series analysis, Monte Carlo, methods to compare models or to estimate latent variables. He teaches courses on forecasting and statistics in general and coordinates the PhD track in Data Analytics. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B. In spring 2024, Dr. Jacob received a CY Initiative Emergence Grant alongside Dr. Kamélia Daudel, also of ESSEC, for their project on “.Improving Markov chain Monte Carlo with geometry”.

'Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.'
This work is supported by ERC grant (UMCMC, ERC-2024-COG,101171415)