NeST is a

Mathematical research collaboration

between Imperial College, Oxford, Bath, LSE, York and Edinburgh on “Network Stochastic Processes and Time Series”, funded by a multimillion pound EPSRC programme grant and several industry and government partners.

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NeST is a

Mathematical research collaboration

Hero banner image

between Imperial College, Oxford, Bath, LSE, York and Edinburgh on “Network Stochastic Processes and Time Series”, funded by a multimillion pound EPSRC programme grant and several industry and government partners.

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What we do

This 6-year programme (2022-2028) will bring probabilists, statisticians and data scientists together to study large dynamic networks with applications in medicine, transport, environmental protection, finance, biology, economics, cybersecurity and AI safety.

Events

Upcoming Events

Date iconTuesday Jun 2nd 2026, 2pm (London time)

NeST Online Seminar Series: Yuqi Gu

We are delighted to announce the next of our NeST Online Seminar Series: Dr. Yuqi Gu (Columbia  University). Title: TBC

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Date iconThursday Mar 19th 2026, 4pm (London time)

NeST Online Seminar Series: George Michailidis

We are delighted to announce the next of our NeST Online Seminar Series: Professor George Michailidis (UCLA). Title: TBC

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Past Events

Date iconThursday Jan 15th 2026, 4.30pm (London time)

NeST Online Seminar Series: Ali Shojaie

We are delighted to announce the next of our NeST Online Seminar Series: Professor Ali Shojaie (University of Washington). Title: Dynamic Networks Modeling for High-Dimensional Non-Stationary Time Series

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Date iconTuesday 16th December - Wednesday 17th December 2025

NetStat workshop, 16-17 December 2025

We are pleased to announce the NeST-related NetStat workshop on "Statistics and Machine Learning for Networks and High-Dimensional Data".

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Date iconThursday Nov 13th 2025, 2pm (London time)

NeST Online Seminar Series: Sofia Olhede

We are delighted to announce the next of our NeST Online Seminar Series: Professor Sofia Olhede (EPFL). Title: Spectral methods to determine dependencies for spatial processes

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Date icon10th June 2025, 3pm-5pm

NeST-related Royal Statistical Society Discussion Meeting

Royal Statistical Society Discussion Meeting on NeST-related project ``New tools for network time series with an application to COVID-19 hospitalisations’ by Guy Nason (Imperial), Daniel Salnikov (Imperial) and Mario Cortina Borja (UCL, Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health). In person from 3-5pm in Lecture Theatre 130, Department of Math, Huxley Building, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ

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Date iconThursday 15th May 2025, 4pm (London time)

NeST Online Seminar Series: Kostas Fokianos

We are delighted to announce the next of our NeST Online Seminar Series: Professor Kostas Fokianos (University of Cyprus). Title: Spatio-Temporal Count Autoregression

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Date iconWednesday 12th February 2025, 4pm (London time)

NeST Online Seminar Series: Eric Kolaczyk

We are delighted to announce the next of our NeST Online Seminar Series: Professor Eric Kolaczyk (McGill University) on "Coevolving Latent Space Network with Attractors Models for Polarization".

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Date iconWednesday 6th November 2024, 4pm (London time)

NeST Online Seminar Series: Ricardo Rastelli

We are delighted to announce the next of our NeST Online Seminar Series: Dr. Ricardo Rastelli (University College Dubline) on "A latent position model for multivariate time series analysis".

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Date icon1st May 2024 at 3pm (London time).

NeST Online Seminar Series: Anru Zhang

We are delighted to announce the first of our NeST Online Seminar Series: Professor Anru Zhang (Duke University) on "High-order Singular Value Decomposition in Tensor Analysis".

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Date icon3rd-8th August 2024

Breaking: Invited Paper Session at Joint Statistical Meetings 2024, Portland Oregon

An invited papers session on Network Stochastic Processes and Time Series has been accepted for JSM2024. Speakers are Professors Mihai Cucuringu (University of Oxford), Tracy Ke (Harvard University) and Carey Priebe (Johns Hopkins University). Precise timing to be announced.

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Date iconTuesday 3rd September, 11.30am

Royal Statistical Society International Conference 2024

RSS 2024: Invited Session on Network Stochastic Processes and Time Series

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Date icon14-16 June 2024

2024 Workshop on Statistical Network Analysis and Beyond (SNAB 2024)

The 2024 Workshop on Statistical Network Analysis and Beyond (SNAB2024) is scheduled to take place on June 14-16, 2023 at the Courtyard by Marriott Nassau Downtown/Junkanoo Beach. Over the span of three days, this workshop aims to unite researchers in the field of network science and related disciplines, providing an avenue for the exchange of innovative ideas and recent findings. The workshop will encompass a wide range of topics, ranging from statistical network modeling to more extensive fields such as tensor modeling, deep learning, and text analysis.

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Date icon2023-10-03

1st NeST Away day and Annual Meeting 2023

We are pleased to announce the successful conclusion of NeST’s first Away Day and Annual Meeting, which took place on 3rd-4th October in York. The two-day event featured a rich program of individual and snapshot presentations delivered by leading mid

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Date icon2023-05-24

1st NeST International Steering and Oversight Committee (ISOC)

Our first ISOC meeting took place on Wednesday, 24 May. It was a productive and engaging session, marked by valuable insights and thoughtful discussions. During the meeting, we had the privilege of having esteemed individuals from diverse backgrounds

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Date icon2023-04-21

Kick-Off Workshop

The first joint event took place online on the 21st of April 2023. There were 70 registered attendees (PhD candidates, Research Assistants, established researchers) from the following institutions: LSE, The Alan Turing Institute, Max Planck Institute

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Our Research

Our programme of research is dedicated to creating realistic models and developing associated statistical inference tools for dynamic network data, supported by rigorous mathematical theory.

We also aim to provide the community with curated network datasets and freely available software for practitioners and scientists wishing to analyse network data.

News

Recent Publications

View all publications
Identification and estimation for matrix time series CP-factor models Cover Image

Identification and estimation for matrix time series CP-factor models

We propose a new method for identifying and estimating the CP-factor models for matrix time series. Unlike the generalized eigenanalysis-based method of Chang et al. (2023) for which the convergence rates of the associated estimators may suffer from small eigengaps as the asymptotic theory is based on some matrix perturbation analysis, the proposed new method enjoys faster convergence rates which are free from any eigengaps. It achieves this by turning the problem into a joint diagonalization of several matrices whose elements are determined by a basis of a linear system, and by choosing the basis carefully to avoid near co-linearity (see Proposition 5 and Section 4.3). Furthermore, unlike Chang et al. (2023) which requires the two factor loading matrices to be full-ranked, the proposed new method can handle rank-deficient factor loading matrices. Illustration with both simulated and real matrix time series data shows the advantages of the proposed new method.

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Autoregressive Hypergraph Cover Image

Autoregressive Hypergraph

Traditional graph representations are insufficient for modelling real-world phenom- ena involving multi-entity interactions, such as collaborative projects or protein complexes, necessitating the use of hypergraphs. While hypergraphs preserve the intrinsic nature of such complex relationships, existing models often overlook tem- poral evolution in relational data. To address this, we introduce a first-order autore- gressive (i.e. AR(1)) model for dynamic non-uniform hypergraphs. This is the first dynamic hypergraph model with provable theoretical guarantees, explicitly defining the temporal evolution of hyperedge presence through transition probabilities that govern persistence and change dynamics. This framework provides closed-form ex- pressions for key probabilistic properties and facilitates straightforward maximum- likelihood inference with uniform error bounds and asymptotic normality, along with a permutation-based diagnostic test. We also consider an AR(1) hypergraph stochastic block model (HSBM), where a novel Laplacian enables exact and effi- cient latent community recovery via a spectral clustering algorithm. Furthermore, we develop a likelihood-based change-point estimator for the HSBM to detect struc- tural breaks. The efficacy and practical value of our methods are comprehensively demonstrated through extensive simulation studies and compelling applications to a primary school interaction data set and the Enron email corpus, revealing insightful community structures and significant temporal changes.

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Spectral embedding of inhomogeneous Poisson processes on multiplex networks Cover Image

Spectral embedding of inhomogeneous Poisson processes on multiplex networks

In many real-world networks, data on the edges evolve in continuous time, naturally motivating representations based on point processes. Heterogeneity in edge types further gives rise to multiplex network point processes. In this work, we propose a model for multiplex network data observed in continuous-time. We establish two-to-infinity norm consistency and asymptotic normality for spectral-embedding-based estimation of the model parameters as both network size and time resolution increase. Drawing inspiration from random dot product graph models, each edge intensity is expressed as the inner product of two low-dimensional latent positions: one dynamic and layer-agnostic, the other static and layer-dependent. These latent positions constitute the primary objects of inference, which is conducted via spectral embedding methods. Our theoretical results are established under a histogram estimator of the network intensities and provide justification for applying a doubly unfolded adjacency spectral embedding method for estimation. Simulations and real-data analyses demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model and inference procedure.

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Simultaneous global and local clustering in multiplex networks with covariate information Cover Image

Simultaneous global and local clustering in multiplex networks with covariate information

Understanding both global and layer-specific group structures is useful for uncovering complex patterns in networks with multiple interaction types. In this work, we introduce a new model, the hierarchical multiplex stochastic blockmodel (HMPSBM), that simultaneously detects communities within individual layers of a multiplex network while inferring a global node clustering across the layers. A stochastic blockmodel is assumed in each layer, with probabilities of layer-level group memberships determined by a node's global group assignment. Our model uses a Bayesian framework, employing a probit stick-breaking process to construct node-specific mixing proportions over a set of shared Griffiths-Engen-McCloseky (GEM) distributions. These proportions determine layer-level community assignment, allowing for an unknown and varying number of groups across layers, while incorporating nodal covariate information to inform the global clustering. We propose a scalable variational inference procedure with parallelisable updates for application to large networks. Extensive simulation studies demonstrate our model's ability to accurately recover both global and layer-level clusters in complicated settings, and applications to real data showcase the model's effectiveness in uncovering interesting latent network structure.

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The Markov approximation of the periodic multivariate Poisson autoregression Cover Image

The Markov approximation of the periodic multivariate Poisson autoregression

This paper introduces a periodic multivariate Poisson autoregression with potentially infinite memory, with a special focus on the network setting. Using contraction techniques, we study the stability of such a process and provide upper bounds on how fast it reaches the periodically stationary regime. We then propose a computationally efficient Markov approximation using the properties of the exponential function and a density result. Furthermore, we prove the strong consistency of the maximum likelihood estimator for the Markov approximation and empirically test its robustness in the case of misspecification. Our model is applied to the prediction of weekly Rotavirus cases in Berlin, demonstrating superior performance compared to the existing PNAR model.

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NeurIPS 2025 (spotlight): Wavelet Canonical Coherence for Nonstationary Signals Cover Image

NeurIPS 2025 (spotlight): Wavelet Canonical Coherence for Nonstationary Signals

Understanding the evolving dependence between two sets of multivariate signals is fundamental in neuroscience and other domains where sub-networks in a system interact dynamically over time. Despite the growing interest in multivariate time series analysis, existing methods for between-clusters dependence typically rely on the assumption of stationarity and lack the temporal resolution to capture transient, frequency-specific interactions. To overcome this limitation, we propose scale-specific wavelet canonical coherence (WaveCanCoh), a novel framework that extends canonical coherence analysis to the nonstationary setting by leveraging the multivariate locally stationary wavelet model. The proposed WaveCanCoh enables the estimation of time-varying canonical coherence between clusters, providing interpretable insight into scale-specific time-varying interactions between clusters. Through extensive simulation studies, we demonstrate that WaveCanCoh accurately recovers true coherence structures under both locally stationary and general nonstationary conditions. Application to local field potential (LFP) activity data recorded from the hippocampus reveals distinct dynamic coherence patterns between correct and incorrect memory-guided decisions, illustrating the capacity of the method to detect behaviorally relevant neural coordination. These results highlight WaveCanCoh as a flexible and principled tool for modeling complex cross-group dependencies in nonstationary multivariate systems. Code for implementing WaveCanCoh is available at https://github.com/mhaibo/WaveCanCoh.git.

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