Second Meeting of the Bulgarian Chapter of MCAA (Day 1)

UNITé Sofia - April 2025

Viktor Senderov

2025-06-26

How Universal Probabilistic Programming Languages Democratize Modeling in Computational Biology

or

My first keynote experience

• On April 10, 2024
• Invited to give a keynote at the University of Galway, School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences, Research Day
• Invitation based on talk I gave at a bioinformatics conference in Lyon the summer before

• Wasn’t sure what to expect

• But always loved Ireland

• Lord of the Rings and all…

• The Irish are very hospitable

• On the night of my arrival my host took me to this restaurant by the ocean

• The weather was bad

• Guiness and sea food were great

Irish culture and language

Cathal Seoighe

• Local names: Cathal Seoighe, Ard Bia, Ty Molly
• Irish language very much alive
• Irish cultural identity based on anti-colonial struggle
• Don’t shy away from political conversation
• Discussed things like the Good Friday accords and Palestine

Presentation at Uni Galway

Slides

• Really enjoyed giving this type of talk
• Cover more topics than in a typical presentation/ perspective
• After, got to judge a student competition on talks and posters
• Sat down with Cathal’s student and drafted some plans for her
• Not easy, but what I found enjoyable is asking open questions to the students about their work
• Also I really liked the recognition that I was getting and would like to get to this stage of my career

Demo

Jupyter Server

Bonus material - Ireland

Irish politics

https://politpro.eu/en/ireland/parties

• No true right-wing parties
• And all the parties that we’ve heard of are socialist-liberal
• Dark green: Sinn Féin
• Red: Labor
• Light green: Green Party
• The ultra-left party is called “Solidarity-People before Profits”
• And the two centrists parties are called: green (Fiana Fáil and Fine Gael)

• Also Connor McGregor who wants to run for president on a Trumpist platform
• Has no chance whatsover

Economics

GDP ranking in Europe:

Source: Visual Capitalist

• Figures distorted by multinational corporations shifting their revenues to Ireland for tax purposes

Education

Source: Visual Capitalist

Nature

• It rains a lot, but the nature is…

• …nothing short of breathtaking