Scientific Program

26 August 2026

16.00-16.45 Registration

16.45-17.00 Opening

17.00-18.25 Talk Session 1
Advances in model-based clustering
Chair: Garritt L. Page (Brigham Young University, USA)

Alessio Farcomeni (University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Italy), Rosario Barone, Francesco Bartolucci, Silvia Pandolfi
Multilayer Dynamic Stochastic Block Models for Analysing International Arms Trade Patterns
Giuseppe Mignemi (Kore University, Italy), Daniele Tancini, Francesco Bartolucci
Extended Infinite Hidden Markov Models
Jason Pillay (University of Pretoria, South Africa), Andriette Bekker, Cristina Tortora, Antonio Punzo
Likelihood-based inference for censored compositional data

18.30-19.30 Keynote Talk 1
Cellwise Robust Discriminant Analysis
Fabio Centofanti, Can Hakan Dagidir, Mia Hubert (KU Leuven, Belgium), Peter J. Rousseeuw
Chair: Agustín Mayo-Iscar (University of Valladolid, Spain)

19.30-21.00 Welcome Cocktail

27 August 2026

08.45-10.10 Talk Session 2
Foundational approaches in clustering
Chair: Andrea Cerioli (University of Parma, Italy)

Vanessa Berenguer-Rico (University of Oxford, UK), Stefan Gudmundsson, Bent Nielsen
k-means: asymptotics and cluster separation
Marco Loog (Radboud University, Netherlands)
Badly Behaved Learning Curves: Nonmonotonicity in Clustering and Classification
Garritt L. Page (Brigham Young University, USA), Andrés F. Barrientos, David B. Dahl, David B. Dunson
Uncertainty Quantification in Bayesian Clustering

10.10-11.10 Keynote Talk 2
The utility of latent variables in model-based clustering
Isobel Claire Gormley (University College Dublin, Ireland)
Chair: Volodymyr Melnykov (University of Alabama, USA)

11.10-11.40 Coffee Break

11.40-13.05 Talk Session 3
Complex model-based clustering in action
Chair: Andriette Bekker (University of Pretoria, South Africa)

Volodymyr Melnykov (University of Alabama, USA), Salvatore Ingrassia, Lingge Wang
Multisample mixture modeling with extensions
Andrea Cappozzo (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy), Luca Scrucca, Thomas Brendan Murphy
MBC3: model-based clustering of MBC2 talks
Federico Castelletti (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy), Andrea Cappozzo, Vincenzo Roberto Sillitti
Graphical model-based clustering of covariance matrices

13.05-13.30 Lightning Talk Session 1
Chair: Jeremy Baggs (University of Alabama, USA)

Silvia D'Elia (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy), Valeria Paggi, Marco Alfò, Maria Brigida Ferraro
Functional Data Analysis and Fuzzy Clustering of Longitudinal Thyroglobulin Trajectories After Thyroid Cancer Treatment
Andrea Bonomo (University of Pavia, Italy), Domenico Giosa, Silvia Figini, Elena Ballante
Characterization of the Italian Gut Microbiota through Shotgun Metagenomics and Biclustering with the Iterative Signature Algori
Elisa Muratore (University of Trento, Italy), Riccardo Gallotti, Claudio Agostinelli
Contrasting disinformation: A mixture of Hawkes Processes for the identification of coordinated inauthentic behaviour
Matteo Ventura (University of Calabria, Italy), Sabrina Giordano, Julien Jacques, Dimitris Karlis, Paola Zuccolotto
Model-Based Clustering of Rating Data: Handling Complex Dependencies and Response Styles
Ockert van Heerden (University of Pretoria, South Africa), Andriëtte Bekker, Seite Makgai, Arnoldus Otto, Antonio Punzo
A Contaminated Model for Overdispersed Multinomial Microbiome Count Data
Sofia Mangano (University of Catania, Italy), Salvatore Ingrassia
A Contrastive Learning Approach for Prior Shift Correction

13.30-14.30 Lunch

14.15-15.15 Keynote Talk 3
Statistical Analysis of Synthetic Data Filtering for Fine-Tuning: A Linear Regression Framework
Heejune Sheen, Harrison Zhou (Yale University, USA)
Chair: Angela Montanari (University of Bologna, Italy)

15.30-15.55 Lightning Talk Session 2
Chair: Johan Lyrvall (National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology - Inria, France)

Jing Li, Jeremy Baggs (University of Alabama, USA), Shuchismita Sarkar, Xuwen Zhu
Multi-Label Classification of Text Data using a Mixture of the von Mises-Fisher Distribution
Lucía Trapote Reglero (University of Valladolid, Spain), Luis Ángel García Escudero, Agustín Mayo Íscar
A High-Dimensional Extension of TCLUST
Luca Fossaluzza (University of Genoa, Italy), Marta Nai Ruscone
Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial Mixture Model via Copula
Seitebaleng Makgai (University of Pretoria, South Africa), Samkelisiwe Ntshangase, Andriëtte Bekker
Understanding Heavy Tailed data via the Logistic Scale Mixture Distribution
Andrea Sottosanti (University of Padova, Italy), Marta Ferrari, David A. van Dyk, Aneta Siemiginowska, Alessandra R. Brazzale
A spatial shrinkage framework for pixel-wise classification of astronomical diffuse faint jets
Hristo Tanev, Charles Macmillan, Francesca Torti (European Commission, Joint Research Center, Italy)
Hierarchical Agri-Food Commodity Classification Using Sentence-BERT and LLMs

15.55-16.25 Coffee Break

16.25-17.50 Talk Session 4
Dimensionality reduction in clustering
Chair: Sollie Millard (University of Pretoria, South Africa)

Johan Lyrvall (National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology - Inria, France), Christophe Biernacki, Christine Keribin, Emmanuel Chazard
Levels Merging in the Latent Class Model
Monia Ranalli (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy), Roberto Rocci
Parsimonious factorial mixture model for simultaneous clustering and dimensionality reduction of three-way ordinal data
Silvia Dallari (University of Bologna, Italy), Laura Anderlucci, Angela Montanari
Random Projections for High-Dimensional Clustering of Continuous and Count Data

20.30 Workshop Dinner (meeting at 19.15, Piazza Verga, about 8 minutes' walk from Camplus Catania.)

28 August 2026

09.00-10.25 Talk Session 5
Robust modeling and outlier detection
Chair: Alessio Farcomeni (University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Italy)

Elena Ballante (University of Pavia, Italy), Federico Maria Quetti, Andrea Bonomo, Paolo Giudici, Silvia Figini
A Bagging-Based Approach to Explainable Clustering with Application to Single-Cell RNA-Seq Data
Cinzia Di Nuzzo, Matteo Farnè (University of Bologna, Italy)
A simultaneous criterion to select latent rank, number of clusters and proportion of outliers
Andrea Cerioli (University of Parma, Italy), Luis Angel Garcia-Escudero, Agustin Mayo-Iscar, Lucía Trapote Reglero
Robust model-based clustering and mixture modeling under heavy tails

10.25-10.45 Lightning Talk Session 3
Chair: Sofia Mangano (University of Catania, Italy)

Silvia Dallari, Edoardo Redivo (University of Bologna, Italy), Cinzia Viroli
A Latent Editing Mixture Model for DNA Sequence Clustering
Igor Melnykov (University of Minnesota Duluth, USA)
Model-Based Clustering of Time-Varying Compositional Data
Yana Melnykov (University of Alabama, USA), Jing Li
On Transformation Discriminant Analysis
Arno Otto (University of Pretoria, South Africa), Andriëtte Bekker, Antonio Punzo, Johan Ferreira, Cristina Tortora
Contaminated Asymmetric Laplace Cluster-Weighted Models
Xinshu Yi, (University of Alabama, USA), Volodymyr Melnykov
The Date of Somma-Vesuvius Eruption

10.45-11.15 Coffee Break

11.15-12.40 Talk Session 6
New trends in clustering and classification
Chair: Vanessa Berenguer-Rico (University of Oxford, UK)

Lucia Filippozzi, Inigo Urteaga, Claudio Agostinelli (University of Trento, Italy)
Bayesian Variable Selection in Generalized Linear Models
Claudio Conversano (University of Cagliari, Italy), Hengyi Ke, Sunil J. Rao
Distorted Variable Analysis
Eduardo Cortes Gomez (University of Buffalo, USA), Jeffrey C. Miecznikowski
A Gap Statistic Framework For Categorical Data Clustering and Testing

12.40-13.00 Lightning Talk Session 4
Chair: Edoardo Redivo (University of Bologna, Italy)

Yuri Calleo (Universitas Mercatorum, Italy), Simone Di Zio, Fabrizio Maturo
Topological clustering in Delphi studies: A network-based approach to dimensionality reduction
Lucia Filippozzi (University of Trento, Italy), Claudio Agostinelli, Sara Wade
Bootstrap-based Variational AutoEncoders
Andre Kleynhans (University of Pretoria, South Africa), Frans Kanfer, Sollie Millard
Mitigating the Impact of Non-Typical Observations: A Component Self-Paced Learning Approach
Farah Naz (University of Pavia, Italy)
A Graph-based Clustering Algorithm for Bridge Problem Solution using Density Peak Assignment through Optimized Shortest Path
Anna Prusak (Krakow University of Economics, Poland), Marek Jabłoński, Dariusz Raś
A multi-criteria framework for AI-maturity classification using TOPSIS-Sort method: evidence from a museum in Kraków

13.00-14.00 Lunch

14.00-15.00 Keynote Talk 4
Clustering multivariate longitudinal data of mixed type
Julien Jacques (Université Lumière Lyon 2, France), Francesco Amato
Chair: Maurizio Vichi (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)

15.00-16.25 Talk Session 7
Soft clustering methods
Chair: Roberto Rocci (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy)

Federico P. Cortese (University of Milan, Italy), Antonio Pievatolo, Elisa Maria Alessi
Fuzzy jump models for soft and hard clustering of mixed-type multivariate time series
Fabrizio Di Mari (University of Calabria, Italy), Roberto Rocci, Stefano Antonio Gattone, Sabrina Giordano
A Fuzzy Entropic Approach for Clustering Curves on a Reduced Subspace
Yana Melnykov, Volodymyr Melnykov, Marta Nai Ruscone (University of Genoa, Italy)
On fuzzy classification indices and their variability assessment

16.25-16.55 Coffee Break

16.55-17.55 Keynote Talk 5
Rethinking Robustness: The Cellwise Paradigm for Heterogeneous Data
Francesca Greselin (University of Milano Bicocca, Italy)
Chair: Luis Angel Garcia-Escudero (Spain)

17:55-18.10 Closing

Wine Session

18.10-19.40 Wine tours in Sicily
Chair: Mariella Ferrara (L’Archestrato, Catania, Italy)

Wineries, wines and vine varieties:

Agata Santangelo - Tenuta Stagliata