This workshop is part of the Bernoulli Center programme at EPFL, to be held from 03 to 06 November 2025.

This workshop aims to foster interdisciplinary communication among researchers working on modeling, analysis, and numerical methods in particle systems, gradient flows, and random maps, to target the problem of sampling complex distributions. The talks will cover a wide range of theoretical and practical techniques, including applications in Bayesian inference, kinetic models, Optimal Transport, and optimization over distributions. By highlighting both stochastic and deterministic approaches, the workshop aims to identify common threads and promote collaboration among researchers tackling the sampling and associated problems from different perspectives of scientific computing, kinetic theory, optimization, and control.

Recording talks

Monday

• 09:30-10:30: Russel Caflisch
  • An Adjoint Method for Optimization of the Boltzmann Equation
• 11:00-11:40: Jingwei Hu
  • Structure-Preserving Particle Method for Collisional Plasmas
• 11:40-12:20: Giacomo Dimarco
  • Instantaneous Control Strategies for Magnetically Confined Fusion Plasma
• 14:30-15:30: Raul Tempone
  • From Stochastic Optimal Control to Sampling: Particles, Projections, and Multilevel Flows
• 16:00-16:40: Abdul Lateef Haji Ali
  • Weak and Strong Convergence of McKean–Vlasov Particle Approximations via Classical Stochastic Analysis
• 16:40-17:20: Hossein Gorji
  • When samples correlate symmetrically: The case of orthogonal coupling dynamics

Tuesday