Janet van Niekerk

May 2026

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  INLA Team Publishes New Book on Joint Survival and Longitudinal Modelling

  1 min read · Tue, May 5 2026

  News

  INLA Longitudinal Models Survival analysis

  We are thrilled to announce the publication of our latest book, a comprehensive guide to fitting complex Bayesian survival, longitudinal, and joint models using the Integrated Nested Laplace Approximations (INLA) methodology. This highly anticipated release represents a major milestone for our team, offering a powerful, computationally efficient alternative to traditional MCMC methods for researchers around the globe.

October 2023

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  Real-time modeling a step closer to reality

  2 min read · Thu, Oct 26 2023

  News

  An efficiency upgrade for an already fast approximation method enables accurate near-real-time modeling of complex systems and large datasets.

February 2023

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  Two-part joint models using INLA published in the Biometrical Journal

  1 min read · Mon, Feb 27 2023

  News

  Two-part joint models for a longitudinal semicontinuous biomarker and a terminal event have been recently introduced based on frequentist estimation. The biomarker distribution is decomposed into a probability of positive value and the expected value among positive values. Shared random effects can represent the association structure between the biomarker and the terminal event. The computational burden increases compared to standard joint models with a single regression model for the biomarker. In this context, the frequentist estimation implemented in the R package frailtypack can be

January 2023

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  INLA for interval-censored data

  1 min read · Tue, Jan 31 2023

  News

  A book chapter based on the use of INLA for efficient Bayesian modeling of interval-censored survival and reliability data has been published in the book Emerging Topics in Modeling Interval-Censored Survival Data published by Springer. This shows practitioners how to apply the INLA framework to produce insights into their data.
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  INLA for HPC

  1 min read · Tue, Jan 31 2023

  News

  Members of the BayesComp group together with collaborators from UCI developed parallelization strategies for the methodology of integrated nested Laplace approximations (INLA). The approach makes use of nested thread-level parallelism, a parallel line search procedure using robust regression in INLA’s optimization phase and the state-of-the-art sparse linear solver PARDISO. This provides a way to flexibly utilize the power of today’s multi-core architectures. The work is integrated in the current version of the open-source R-INLA package, making its improved performance conveniently available

August 2022

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  KAUST Ph.D. candidate wins ISBA-BayesComp poster award at the International Society for Bayesian Analysis 2022

  2 min read · Sun, Aug 21 2022

  News

  Bayesian computational statistics

  Esmail Abdul Fattah, a KAUST Ph.D. candidate in statistics, won a poster award in the "junior-BayesComp-ISBA" category at the 30th meeting of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA 2022) held from June 26 to July 1 in Montreal, Canada.

June 2022

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  INLA course at Bordeaux population health center

  1 min read · Wed, Jun 15 2022

  News

  Some members of the INLA team presented an INLA short course to the Biostatistics group at the Bordeaux population health center of INSERM and the University of Bordeaux. The content was tailored for biostatistics and public health applications, to avail INLA as a tool for fast Bayesian inference of applicable statistical models.

October 2020

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  Prof. Rue and Dr. van Niekerk present R-INLA workshop at ICoMCoS2020

  1 min read · Mon, Oct 5 2020

  News

  Prof. Haavard Rue was invited as a keynote speaker at the International Conference on Mathematics, Computational Sciences, and Statistics (ICoMCoS) 2020, organized by Universitas Airlangga in Indonesia during 29-30 September. Together with Dr. Janet van Niekerk, they presented a virtual workshop on R-INLA and its applications.

September 2019

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  Dr. Janet van Niekerk presents at the International Symposium in Computational and Methodological Statistics and Biostatistics in South Africa

  1 min read · Sun, Sep 8 2019

  News

  Dr. Janet van Niekerk presented a talk on complex survival models in the International Symposium in Computational and Methodological Statistics and Biostatistics in July 2019 at the University of Pretoria. She also collaborated on existing and new projects with collaborators from South Africa and North Carolina.
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  BayesComp members at the IWSM 2019 in Guimaraes, Portugal

  1 min read · Sun, Sep 8 2019

  News

  Prof. Haavard Rue, Dr. Haakon Bakka and Dr. Janet van Niekerk attended and presented at the International Workshop on Statistical Modelling in July 2019. This workshop brings together experts and young researchers to discuss and collaborate on challenges in statistical modelling.
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  BayesComp group present INLA course in South Africa

  1 min read · Wed, Sep 4 2019

  News

  Prof. Haavard Rue, Dr. Haakon Bakka and Dr. Janet van Niekerk presented a four day long INLA training course at the University of South Africa in Florida, Johannesburg during June 2019. The course was designed to impact young staff and PhD students from previously disadvantaged universities in South Africa. The audience gained a lot of skills during this course and the course was very well received.
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  BayesComp members at the ISI's WSC 2019 in Kuala Lumpur

  1 min read · Wed, Sep 4 2019

  News

  Prof. Haavard Rue, Dr. Haakon Bakka and Dr. Janet van Niekerk attended the 62 nd World Statistics Congress of the ISI in Kuala Lumpur on 18-23 August 2019 where they presented in invited and contributed paper sessions. This bi-annual meeting brings together major role players from academia, government offices and industry partners.