Career Summary

Biography and Education

Alain Latour is a university professor and a recognized researcher in the field of applied mathematics and statistics. Professor Emeritus at the Université Grenoble Alpes, he has taught and conducted research in time series analysis, particularly integer-valued series and stochastic processes.

Alain Latour obtained a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Université de Montréal in 1986. His research focused on the properties of autocovariances and autocorrelations of seasonal models. Before that, he completed a Master's degree in Mathematics in 1978 and a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics in 1975 at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

Academic Career

Alain Latour's academic career began in 1975 at UQAM, where he held various positions: research assistant, lecturer, substitute professor, and later assistant professor. He climbed the ranks to become a full professor in 1995, a position he held until 2005. He was also an associate professor at UQAM from 2005 to 2021. During this period, he taught and actively contributed to research in mathematics and statistics, especially in the analysis of integer-valued time series, which became a major focus of his work.

In 2002, Latour joined Université Pierre-Mendès-France, now part of Université Grenoble Alpes. There, he taught, conducted research, and played a role in developing academic programs and training students.

Research and Scientific Contributions

Alain Latour is recognized for his work on integer-valued time series and bilinear models. His research aims to develop statistical tools tailored to integer-valued series observed in finance, epidemiology, and other fields. He notably contributed to the development of GARCH models and integer-valued bilinear models, improving the modeling of epidemiological data and rare financial events.

Some of his projects have been funded by prestigious organizations, including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), which awarded him multiple grants for his work on time series, Poisson processes, and threshold ARCH models.

Latour has also participated in several international research projects, including collaborations with researchers in Venezuela on contaminant transport at water surfaces and with French researchers on fractional models.

Publications

Alain Latour is the author or co-author of numerous scientific articles published in prestigious journals, such as the Journal of Time Series Analysis and Advances in Applied Probability. He has also co-written several books on stochastic processes and fractional diffusions, including one published by Springer. The book co-authored with C. Berzin and J. R. León on the inference of the Hurst parameter is particularly notable in the field of diffusions driven by fractional processes.

Teaching

Alain Latour has taught a wide range of courses in mathematics and statistics, from statistical inference to stochastic processes. He contributed to the development of mathematics and applied statistics curricula at UQAM and Université Grenoble Alpes, where he also held administrative roles, including Director of the Unit for Training and Research in Human and Social Sciences (UFR SHS). He was also involved in creating and establishing what is now called the Faculty of Humanities, Health, Sport, and Societies (H3S).

Distinctions and Impact

In recognition of his contributions to research, Alain Latour has been regularly invited to review articles for renowned scientific journals. He has also served as a reviewer for research projects funded by NSERC. His work has had both theoretical and practical impacts, particularly in the use of time series for financial forecasting and disease surveillance in epidemiology.

Recent Research Interests

More recently, Alain Latour has focused on developing models for continuous-time random processes, in collaboration with researchers such as C. Berzin and J. R. León. These works mainly address the estimation of the Hurst parameter in fractional processes, a growing area of interest in finance and applied mathematics.