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Michal Valko : Intro

Portrait photo of Michal Valko
Isara Labs logo Inria logo MVA Master program logo
Book cover: Bandits on Graphs and Structures

Michal Valko, Founding Researcher at Isara Labs, researcher at Inria, and a lecturer at MVA/ENS PS.

large language models, reasoning, fine-tuning, test-time computation, reinforcement learning with human feedback, world models

Bio

Michal is the Founding Researcher at Isara Labs, tenured researcher at Inria, and a lecturer at MVA at ENS Paris-Saclay. Michal is primarily interested in designing algorithms that would require as little human supervision as possible. He works on methods and settings that are able to deal with minimal feedback, such as deep reinforcement learning, bandit algorithms, self-supervised learning, or self play. Michal has recently worked on representation learning, world models and deep (reinforcement) learning algorithms that have some theoretical underpinning. In the past he has also worked on sequential algorithms with structured decisions where exploiting the structure leads to provably faster learning. Michal is now working on a new generation of large language models (LLMs), in addition to providing algorithmic solutions for their scalable test-time inference, fine-tuning and alignment. He received his PhD in 2011 from the University of Pittsburgh, before getting a tenure at Inria in 2012 and co-creating Google DeepMind Paris with R. Munos. In 2024, he became a Principal Llama Scientist at Meta, building online reinforcement learning stack and research for Llama 3. In 2025, he joined Isara Labs as a founding researcher.

Current Students

Giorgio Racca
PhD 2025 - 2028 U. Copenhagen with A. Sanyal
Andrej Špitalský
Master 2025 Comenius University, Bratislava with D. Tiapkin
Andy Munos
Mentoring 2025 Lycée International de Saint-Germain-en-Laye

Past Students and Postdocs

Pierre Ménard
Postdoc 2019 - 2020 ENS Rennes/U. Toulouse with É. Kaufmann → U. Magdeburg → Meta
Édouard Oyallon
Postdoc 2017 - 2018 ENS Rennes/ENS Ulm → EC Paris → CNRS
Côme Fiegel
PhD 2022 - 2025 ENS Ulm with P. Ménard and V. Perchet
Daniil Tiapkin 🎓
PhD 2023 - 2025 X with A. Naumov, D. Belomestny, É. Moulines and P. Ménard → DeepMind
Lisa Bedin 🎓
PhD 2021 - 2025 X with É. Moulines → Altrove → Cartesia
Jean Tarbouriech 🎓
PhD 2019 - 2022 X/MVA with A. Lazaric → DeepMind
Omar D. Domingues 🎓
PhD 2018 - 2022 EC Paris/MVA with É. Kaufmann → Owkin → Cohere
Xuedong Shang 🎓
PhD 2017 - 2021 ENS Rennes with É. Kaufmann → Barclays → QRT
Pierre Perrault 🎓
PhD 2017 - 2020 ENS Cachan/MVA with V. Perchet → IDEMIA
Julien Seznec 🎓
PhD 2017 - 2021 ENS Ulm/MVA with A. Lazaric → Education Nationale
Guillaume Gautier 🎓
PhD 2017 - 2020 EC Lille/MVA with R. Bardenet → CNRS → Decathlon
Jean-Bastien Grill 🎓
PhD 2014 - 2019 ENS Ulm/MVA with R. Munos → DeepMind
Tomáš Kocák 🎓
PhD 2013 - 2016 U. Comenius with R. Munos → ENS Lyon → U. Potsdam
Daniele Calandriello 🎓
PhD AFIA, 1st prize 2014 - 2017 Polimi with A. Lazaric → IIT → DeepMind
Daniel Jarrett
Visiting 2022 U. Cambridge with C. Tallec → DeepMind
Yunhao Tang
Visiting 2019 - 2020 and 2021 Columbia U. with R. Munos → DeepMind → Meta → Mistral → Anthropic
Aadirupa Saha
Visiting 2019 - 2020 IIS Bangalore with P. Gaillard → Microsoft Research → Apple MLR → UIC
Kaige Yang
Visiting 2019 UCL with P. Ménard → VU Amsterdam
Rianne de Heide
Visiting 2019 CWI/U. Leiden with É. Kaufmann → U. Twente + CWI
Côme Fiegel
M2 2022 ENS Ulm with P. Ménard and V. Perchet → CWI → ENSAE
Robert Müller
M2 2020 TUM with P. Ménard → SonyAI → Convergence
Daniil Tiapkin
MSc 2021 - 2023 HSE with A. Naumov, D. Belomestny, É. Moulines and P. Ménard → X
David Cheikhi
Master 2020 - 2021 Columbia U./X with P. Ménard → Columbia GSB
Côme Fiegel
L3 2019 ENS Ulm with V. Gabillon → ENS MVA
Ahmed Choukarah
L3 2020 ENS Ulm with P. Ménard → Ringover
Axel Elaldi
Master 2017 - 2018 EC Lille → ENS PS/MVA → NYU (PhD)
Xuedong Shang
Master 2017 ENS Rennes with É. Kaufmann → Inria
Guillaume Gautier
Master 2016 ENS PS with R. Bardenet → Inria/CNRS
Andrea Locatelli
Master 2015 - 2016 ENSAM/ENS PS with A. Carpentier → U. Potsdam (PhD) → ShareNow → IDEM
Souhail Toumdi
Master 2015 - 2016 EC Lille with R. Bardenet → ENS PS/MVA → Société Générale → JobTeaser → Criteo
Akram Erraqabi
Master 2015 X → U. Montréal
Mastane Achab
Master 2015 X with G. Neu → ENS PS → TPT (PhD) → UPF Barcelona → TII
Jean-Bastien Grill
Master 2014 ENS Paris with R. Munos → Inria
Alexandre Dubus
Master 2012 - 2013 U. Lille1 → Inria
Karim Jedda
Master 2012 - 2013 EC Lille → ProSiebenSat.1 → Parity Technologies
Alexis Wehrli
Master 2012 - 2013 EC Lille → ERDF

Contact

Isara Labs
San Francisco, California, US
Paris, France
Inria Lille - Nord Europe
Équipe Scool (bureau: A05)
40 avenue Halley
59650 Villeneuve d'Ascq, France
+33 3 59 57 78 01
Centre Borelli
ENS Paris-Saclay (bureau: vacataires)
4, avenue des Sciences
91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, France