Updates on research, talks, publications, and professional activity.
- ASAI Stream features my AI Personality 2026 recognition for Social Impact of the Year: weekly Slovak AI ecosystem overview!
- Invited talk at the Armenia LLM Summer School in Yerevan, Armenia (Aug 3-7)!
- Interview in Grand Magazine: Majme v umelej inteligencii nášho partnera, nie rozhodcu!
- Speaking at Future Week 2026 in Norway:!
- Talk at Krafton AI in Seoul, South Korea!
- Talk at the Global AI Show: AI 2030 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (June 29-30)!
- Keynote at the European Commission JRC High-Level Event on Democracy in Brussels!
- Won ASAI AI Osobnosť 2026: 1st prize for AI Social Impact of the Year and 2nd prize for AI Innovator of Slovakia, photo!
- Lecturing at the International Summer School on Generative AI at Sapienza Università di Roma (June 22-26)!
- Keynote at the Critical Ventures Ecosystem Summit 2026 in Lisbon (June 21-22)!
- Invited talk at Jarná ITAPA 2026 in Bratislava!
- Talk at the Orange Business Conference, video in Bratislava!
- Online talk for AI Day 2 at ZŠ Valaliky, Slovakia!
- Lecturing at the Reinforcement Learning Summer School (RLSS) in Milan, Italy!
- Lecturing at the Advanced Course on Data Science & Machine Learning in Castiglione della Pescaia, Tuscany (June 8-12)!
- Jürgen Schmidhuber gives a shout-out to BYOL in his lecture "World Models, RL, and the Year that Changed AI" (at 1:18:21)!
- Celebrating 1 year of Isara Labs: photo!
- Panel at GLOBSEC Forum 2026 in Prague (May 21-23)!
- Talk on "How Large Language Models Learn to Reason" at the Giorgi Nikoladze Scientific Research Center Seminar, Kutaisi International University, Georgia!
- Talk at Rhizome Séminaire in Paris!
- Talk at the Artificial Intelligence + Quantum Conference in Košice (May 11-12)!
- Talk at GHOST Day: Applied Machine Learning Conference in Poznań, Poland (May 8-9)!
- Accepted at ICML 2026: Language Generation with Replay: A Learning-Theoretic View of Model Collapse with G. Racca and A. Sanyal!
- Invited talk at the Slovak Oxford Science Conference 2026 in Payerbach, Austria (April 29 - May 2)!
- Speaking at IT/AI Night organized by Slovak Global Network at STU Bratislava (~500 attendees)!
- Public conversation at KInIT in Bratislava: Where Are Humans Still Better Than AI? Michal Valko on Uncertainty and the Future of Technology!
- Invited talk at KInIT (Kempelen Institute, Bratislava) on what is new in our research!
- Keynote at AI Day at FMUK Bratislava!
- New preprint on optimal last-iterate convergence in matrix games with bandit feedback: Log-barrier for matrix games with C. Fiegel, P. Ménard, T. Kozuno, and V. Perchet!
- Podcast interviews in April: Digitálna Strelka, Veda na dosah, Veda odpovedá!
- The Wall Street Journal writes about Isara: OpenAI Backs New AI Startup Seeking Bot Army Breakthroughs
- New preprint on model collapse from a learning-theoretic perspective: Language Generation with Replay with G. Racca and A. Sanyal!
- BreakingAI News interview, Machines Can Think!
- Forbes: Who to watch in 2026 — These Slovaks are playing in the world's top league! Forbes article
- Congrats to Daniil Tiapkin for defending his thesis in December 2025 and joining DeepMind! Daniil Tiapkin, thesis
- Congrats to Lisa Bedin for defending her thesis in 2025! Lisa Bedin, thesis
- New Master student Andrej Špitalský (2025), co-supervised with <a href='https://d-tiapkin.github.io/'>D. Tiapkin</a>!
- New PhD student at University of Copenhagen (2025-2028) Giorgio Racca, co-supervised with <a href='https://amartya18x.github.io/'>A. Sanyal</a>!
- Congrats to Côme Fiegel for defending his thesis in 2025! Côme Fiegel
- Game theory paper accepted to ICML 2025!
- I became an Ambassador for FR8!
- Advisory Board member for GHOST Day: Applied Machine Learning Conference (Poland 2025, 2026).
- Became an Envoy for ESET Science Award!
- Advising Mistral AI, Fastino, Mercor, HaizeLabs, Atla and many more AI startups!
- Angel investor in Entalpic, Forgent AI!
- Became a Venture Partner at Sparkle Ventures, Formula VC, KAYA VC, Cherry Ventures, Visionaries!
- I served as an area chair for NeurIPS 2024.
- Paper on online RLHF accepted to NeurIPS 2024!
- Teaching at MVA/ENS Paris-Saclay for 2024-2025! Graphs in Machine Learning
- I co-organized the ICML 2024 workshop on LLM alignment.
- I gave an invited talk on LLM alignment at ICML 2024.
- I served as a senior area chair for ICML 2024.
- I gave an invited talk on online RLHF at Google Research in 2024.
- I gave a keynote talk on alignment at the European AI Summit 2024.
- I gave an invited talk on reinforcement learning from human feedback at DeepMind Paris
- New postdoc joined the team in 2024! Pierre Ménard
- I became the Founding Researcher at Isara Labs!
- Four LLM alignment papers accepted to ICML 2024!
- We released Llama 3, check it out! Llama 3 in 2024.
- I became a Principal Llama Scientist of Meta's GenAI in Paris! Principal Llama Scientist
- IPO paper accepted to IPO, AISTATS 2024!
- Paper on scalable fine-tuning accepted to AISTATS 2024!
- Fast-forward ⏩ alignment research with Nash learning from human feedback!
- One RLHF theory and one exploration bonus paper at ICLR 2024!
- Paper on test-time computation for LLMs accepted to ICLR 2024!
- I co-organized the NeurIPS 2023 workshop on representation learning.
- I served as a senior area chair for NeurIPS 2023.
- A new RLHF paper from our group! RLHF paper
- Another RLHF result, this time includes learning rates for RLHF! RLHF result
- An RL paper on learning rate randomization accepted to NeurIPS 2023!
- Teaching at MVA/ENS Paris-Saclay for 2023-2024! Graphs in Machine Learning
- Paper on representation learning for world models accepted to NeurIPS 2023!
- Co-organized EEML 2023 in Slovakia!
- Paper on self-supervised learning for video accepted to ICCV 2023!
- I served as an area chair for ICML 2023.
- I gave a tutorial on reinforcement learning from human feedback at ICML 2023.
- BOLD (ANR) project accepted for 2019-2023 (PI: V. Perchet).
- Apply for DeepMind Paris internships for Summer 2023. DeepMind Paris internships
- I gave an invited talk on BYOL and self-supervised learning at Facebook AI Research in 2023.
- I gave an invited talk on world models at MIT in 2023.
- I gave an invited talk on game-theoretic approaches to alignment at Stanford in 2023.
- Nine papers including two orals accepted to ICML 2023!
- BIG NEWS: Outstanding paper award at ICML 2023 for our game theory work! ICML 2023, game theory work
- Paper on efficient exploration in RL accepted to ICML 2023!
- Paper on bandit algorithms with graph structure accepted to AISTATS 2023!
- Two papers on RL accepted to NeurIPS 2022!
- BYOL-Hindsight led by Dan Jarret accepted to NeurIPS 2022 DeepRL Workshop!
- Teaching at MVA/ENS Paris-Saclay for 2022-2023! Graphs in Machine Learning
- Congrats to Jean Tarbouriech for defending his thesis on July 6th, 2022! Jean Tarbouriech
- BYOL-Explore that performs representation learning and exploration together is out! BYOL-Explore
- Apply for DeepMind Paris internships for Summer 2022. DeepMind Paris internships
- Three papers accepted to ICML 2022!
- Our paper From Dirichlet to Rubin received a long oral at ICML 2022! (< 2%) From Dirichlet to Rubin
- Congrats to Omar D. Domingues for defending his thesis on March 18th, 2022! Omar D. Domingues
- Two RL papers accepted to AISTATS 2022!
- BGRL accepted to ICLR 2022!
- Joined the editorial boards of TMLR, JMLR, MLJ.
- Congrats to Xuedong Shang for defending his thesis on September 29th, 2021! Xuedong Shang
- Five papers accepted to NeurIPS 2021, including 1 oral and 2 spotlights! NeurIPS 2021
- Teaching at MVA/ENS Paris-Saclay for 2021-2022! Graphs in Machine Learning
- BraVe, self-supervised learning framework for video, accepted to ICCV 2021!
- Our minimax SSP work was invited to be presented as RL Theory seminar! minimax SSP
- IXOMD was invited to be presented as RL Theory seminar!
- I served as an area chair for ICLR 2021.
- Six papers accepted to ICML 2021, including the long talk on UCBMQ! ICML 2021
- KeRNS algorithm for non-stationary kernel RL accepted to AISTATS 2021!
- The Graphs in ML MVA course started on January 5th, 2021 and was taught by Daniele Calandriello.
- Three papers on reinforcement learning theory accepted to ALT 2021!
- Promoted to Senior Staff Research Scientist at DeepMind Paris!
- Congrats to Julien Seznec for defending his thesis on December 15th, 2020! Julien Seznec
- I served as an area chair for NeurIPS 2020.
- Congrats to Pierre Perrault for defending his thesis on November 30th, 2020! Pierre Perrault
- After 4 years, the full Spectral Bandits paper with the lower bound is now online. now online
- Five papers accepted to NeurIPS 2020 including two oral talks for BYOL and DISCO and 1 spotlight! NeurIPS 2020
- Yannic Kilcher made a YouTube video about our BYOL work! YouTube video
- Three months of lockdown led to our three months intense self-supervised learning :-). BYOL is out! BYOL is out!
- I gave 3 online talks on BYOL in November and December 2020. BYOL
- Congrats to Guillaume Gautier for defending his thesis on May 19th, 2020! Guillaume Gautier
- Eight papers accepted to ICML 2020. "See" you in Vienna! ICML 2020
- Covariance-adapting semi-bandits paper accepted to COLT 2020. "See" you in Graz! COLT 2020
- I gave an invited course on reinforcement learning at Math of Machine Learning Winter School during February 19th-22nd, 2020 in Sochi, Russia. Math of Machine Learning Winter School
- Four papers accepted to AISTATS 2020. "See" you in Palermo! AISTATS 2020
- I served as an area chair for NeurIPS 2019.
- Congrats to Omar and Guillaume for their NeurIPS 2019 travel awards!
- Congrats to Jean-Bastien Grill for defending his thesis in 2019 and joining DeepMind! Jean-Bastien Grill, thesis
- Joined DeepMind Paris as a Staff Research Scientist!
- I gave an invited talk during October 16th-18th, 2019 at GIF 2019, Yerevan, Armenia. GIF 2019
- I gave an invited talk during September 26-27, 2019 at Lancaster and DeepMind Bandit Workshop, London, UK. Lancaster and DeepMind Bandit Workshop
- I gave a talk during September 25-26, 2019, at Recent developments in kernel methods, UCL, London, UK. Recent developments in kernel methods
- Four papers accepted to NeurIPS 2019. See you in Vancouver and Whistler! NeurIPS 2019
- I gave an invited talk on July 23rd, 2019 for Cisco in Kraków, Poland. Cisco
- I gave an invited talk at Yandex HQ on July 5th, 2019 in Moscow, Russia. Yandex
- I gave an invited talk during July 3rd-8th, 2019 at RAAI Summer School 2019, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. RAAI Summer School 2019
- I was on the program committee for COLT 2019.
- I gave an invited talk on June 14th-15th, 2019 at ICML workshop on negative dependence.
- On June 3rd-4th, 2019 we organized The power of graphs workshop. The power of graphs, Laura Toni
- I became a reelected member of Inria Evaluation Committee for 2015-2019. Inria Evaluation Committee
- I gave two invited talks on January 7th and 8th, 2019 at Verimag, CNRS Grenoble, France. Verimag
- We organized Optimizing Human Learning 2019 workshop. Optimizing Human Learning 2019
- We organized Reinforcement Learning Summer SCOOL on 1-12 July 2019 in Lille, France. Reinforcement Learning Summer SCOOL
- I gave an invited talk on May 28th, 2019 at Theoretical Computer Science seminar at CU in Bratislava. Theoretical Computer Science seminar
- Two papers accepted to ICML 2019. See you in Long Beach! ICML 2019
- A GP-UCB sparsification paper accepted to COLT 2019. See you in Phoenix! COLT 2019
- I gave an invited talk on February 20th, 2019 at Data Analytics Meetings at UPJŠ in Košice. Data Analytics Meetings
- Three papers accepted to AISTATS 2019. See you in Okinawa! AISTATS 2019
- I gave an invited talk on January 25th, 2019 at DPMMS, U. Cambridge, UK. DPMMS
- P. Ménard joined as a postdoc! P. Ménard
- Two papers on black-box optimization accepted to ALT 2019! ALT 2019
- I served as an area chair for NeurIPS 2018.
- DPPy: Sampling determinantal point processes with Python released!
- Pierre Perrault gave an invited talk on Stochastic multi-arm bandit problem at Lambda seminar, Université de Bordeaux.
- Starting October 1st, 2018, I taught Graphs in Machine Learning in MVA Master at ENS Paris-Saclay! Graphs in Machine Learning, MVA Master, ENS Paris-Saclay
- I gave an invited talk on September 10th-13th, 2018 at International Workshop on Optimization and Machine Learning at CIMI, Toulouse. Optimization and Machine Learning
- Brownian motion optimization accepted to NeurIPS 2018! See you in Montréal! NeurIPS 2018
- A paper on optimistic optimization accepted to EWRL 2018. EWRL 2018
- A paper on scattering for deep learning accepted to ECCV 2018. ECCV 2018
- ICML Top 10 Reviewer Award at ICML 2018!
- I co-organized CNRS Summer school on Networks, Graphs, and Machine Learning (RESCOM 2018) in Porquerolles, June 18-22, 2018. RESCOM 2018
- We organized Optimizing Human Learning workshop. Optimizing Human Learning
- Congrats to Daniele Calandriello for winning the prize for the Best AI Thesis from France in 2018. Inria press release, Inria article, CNRS article
- I gave an invited talk for Workshop on Graph Learning, LINCS, Paris, on May 14th, 2018. Workshop on Graph Learning
- A paper on distributed graph sparsification accepted to ICML 2018. See you in Stockholm! ICML 2018
- A bandit paper on best of both worlds accepted to COLT 2018. See you in Stockholm! COLT 2018
- I gave an invited talk at Journée Big data, Polytech'Lille on March 22nd, 2018, in Lille. Journée Big data, Polytech'Lille
- I gave an invited talk for GDR ISIS on February 8th, 2018 at Télécom ParisTech.
- I gave an invited talk on January 7th, 2018 at MIST 2018.
- Received Inria award for scientific excellence for 2018-2021: Prime d'excellence scientifique.
- DELTA (EU CHIST-ERA) project accepted for 2018-2022 (Project Coordinator, PI: A. Jonsson). DELTA
- Congrats to Daniele Calandriello for defending his thesis on December 18th, 2017! Daniele Calandriello
- Adobe research highlights our work on online influence maximization presented at NIPS 2017. online influence maximization
- I gave a talk on November 9th, 2017 at Plateau Inria Euratechnologies.
- Starting October 2nd, 2017, I taught Graphs in Machine Learning in MVA Master at ENS Paris-Saclay! Graphs in Machine Learning, MVA Master, ENS Paris-Saclay
- I gave a talk on September 19th, 2017 at DeepMind, London.
- I gave a talk on September 18th, 2017 at Decision Theory and Network Science, Lancaster, UK (STOR-i 2017) Decision Theory and Network Science
- Équipe associée Nord-Européenne accepted to work with A. Carpentier on Adaptive allocation of resources for recommender systems.
- Two papers accepted to NIPS 2017. See you in California! NIPS 2017
- I gave a talk on July 11th, 2017 at ICML 2017 workshop on Picky Learners. ICML 2017 workshop on Picky Learners
- Congrats to Guillaume and Daniele for their travel grants to ICML 2017. ICML 2017
- I gave a talk on June 28th, 2017 for L'Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse.
- I gave a talk on June 14th, 2017 at Journées Scientifiques Inria 2017 in Nice, France.
- Extra-Learn (ANR) project accepted for 2014-2017 (PI: A. Lazaric).
- I gave a popularization talk on maximizing influencer detection on social networks at Inria Lille.
- Two papers accepted to ICML 2017. See you in Australia! ICML 2017
- Congrats to Daniele for receiving travel grants to AISTATS 2017. AISTATS 2017
- I gave a talk on March 22nd, 2017 at Universität Potsdam at Amazon in Berlin.
- Spectral Bandits accepted for publication to JMLR. JMLR
- Two papers accepted to AISTATS 2017. See you in Florida! AISTATS 2017
- New projects starting: LeLivreScolaire.fr - Sequential Learning for Educational Systems (PI, 2017-2020), Allocate with U. Potsdam (PI, 2017-2019), BoB (ANR, PI: R. Bardenet, 2016-2020).
- I gave an invited talk on December 21st, 2016 at Textkernel talks series in Amsterdam. Textkernel talks series
- Congrats to Tomáš Kocák for defending his thesis in 2016! Tomáš Kocák, thesis
- Starting October 3rd, 2016, I taught Graphs in Machine Learning in MVA Master at ENS Paris-Saclay! Graphs in Machine Learning, MVA Master, ENS Paris-Saclay
- I gave an invited talk on September 22nd, 2016 at Theoretical Computer Science seminar in Bratislava. Theoretical Computer Science seminar
- I gave an invited talk on September 15th-19th, 2016 at ITAT 2016 conference at High Tatras, Slovakia. ITAT 2016
- TrailBlazer paper on sample-efficient Monte-Carlo planning accepted as oral presentation to NeurIPS 2016! NeurIPS 2016
- My habilitation thesis, Bandits on graphs and structures, is now online. Bandits on graphs and structures
- I gave an invited talk on June 16th, 2016 at Graph-based Learning and Graph Mining in Lille. Graph-based Learning and Graph Mining
- On June 15th, 3:30 PM at ENS Paris-Saclay, I defended my HdR thesis on Bandits on Graphs and Structures! Bandits on Graphs and Structures
- I gave an invited talk on May 13th, 2016 at Network Science Thematic Semester, at ENS Lyon. Network Science Thematic Semester
- One paper accepted to ICML 2016 and two to UAI 2016. See you in NYC! ICML 2016, UAI 2016
- Bayesian policy gradient and actor-critic algorithms accepted to JMLR. JMLR
- Two graph bandit papers accepted to AISTATS 2016! AISTATS 2016
- I gave an invited talk at Multi-armed Bandit Workshop in Lancaster, UK. Multi-armed Bandit Workshop
- Starting September 28th, 2015, I taught Graphs in Machine Learning in MVA Master at ENS Paris-Saclay! Graphs in Machine Learning, MVA Master, ENS Paris-Saclay
- Parallel Optimistic Optimization paper accepted to NIPS 2015! NIPS 2015
- SequeL hosted ICML 2015 in Lille! ICML 2015
- ICML Reviewer Award at ICML 2015!
- I was elected to be a member of Inria Evaluation Committee for 2014-2015. Inria Evaluation Committee
- Received Comenius University Distinguished Alumni award!
- Polymatroid Bandits accepted for publication to JMLR. JMLR
- MESSI (MaxEnt SSIRL) paper accepted to IJCAI 2015 in Argentina. IJCAI 2015
- Two bandit papers accepted to ICML 2015 in Lille, France. ICML 2015
- Inria's press interview with N. Vayatis and myself about MVA's Graphs in ML. French, English
- Intel face recognition advertising video.
- Starting in January 2015, I taught Graphs in Machine Learning in MVA Master at ENS Paris-Saclay! Graphs in Machine Learning, MVA Master, ENS Paris-Saclay
- EduBand, associated team project with Carnegie Mellon, accepted for 2015-2018 (with A. Lazaric and E. Brunskill).
- Three papers on practical bandit settings accepted to NeurIPS 2014! NeurIPS 2014
- Ford and Intel Mobii project using Face Recognition at Engadget. Engadget
- Elected member of Inria Evaluation Committee (CE Inria, 2014-2019).
- I became CR1, an experienced junior scientist, at Inria in 2014.
- We established an Erasmus agreement between École Centrale, Lille and U. Comenius, Bratislava for Computer Science. École Centrale, Lille, U. Comenius, Bratislava
- Ford prototype using Face Recognition at Intel. Intel
- Two Spectral Bandit papers accepted to ICML 2014, AAAI 2014!
- Bandits attack function optimization paper accepted to CEC 2014. CEC 2014
- I organized a plenary Inria talk by Jennifer Healey on Transportation Futures.
- Received Inria award for scientific excellence for 2014-2017: Prime d'excellence scientifique.
- Recorded talk from ICML 2013 on StoSOO is online. online
- Promoted to tenured experienced scientist at Inria Lille with SequeL team!
- I was on the organizing committee of JFPDA 2013. JFPDA 2013
- Inria publishes an article about our work at INTEL on Face Recognition. Face Recognition
- Kernelised contextual bandits paper accepted to UAI 2013, see you in Bellevue, WA! UAI 2013
- INTEL/Inria collaboration: Signed INTEL funded project on Internet of Things research.
- StoSOO paper accepted to ICML 2013! ICML 2013
- FG 2013 paper accepted. See you in April in Shanghai! FG 2013
- I was at ICML, EWRL 2012 in Edinburgh in July 2012.
- I gave a talk at Large-Scale Online Learning and Decision-Making Workshop in Windsor, UK.
- EWRL 2012 paper accepted for presentation. EWRL 2012
- Our article was accepted to the JMLR post-proceedings of EWRL 2012. EWRL 2012
- I was the opening speaker at Slovak Oxford Science 2012.
- An article accepted to JBI 2012. JBI 2012
- An article accepted to International Journal of Dentistry. article
- I became a junior researcher at Inria Lille - Nord Europe with SequeL team.
- Joined Inria Lille as a postdoc with Rémi Munos in team SequeL!
- CompLACS (EU FP7) project accepted for 2011-2015 (PI: J. Shawe-Taylor). CompLACS
- I submitted the final version of my dissertation on August 18th, 2011. final version
- I defended my dissertation on August 1st, 2011. dissertation
- I received my PhD in Machine Learning from University of Pittsburgh.
- ICDM 2011 paper accepted. paper
- I gave a talk at Microsoft Research on July 6th, 2011.
- I was at ICML 2011 from June 24th until July 2nd.
- I won the Computer Science Research Competition 2011. Computer Science Research Competition 2011
- Compunetix Best Research Award from the CS Department at University of Pittsburgh (also received in 2008)!
- ICML 2011 - Global paper accepted: Conditional Anomaly Detection Using Soft Harmonic Functions. paper
- I received the award for Runner-Up for Best Research Poster, Elevator Pitch and Scavenger Hunt Award on CS Day, March 24th, 2011. Runner-Up for Best Research Poster, Elevator Pitch
- Paper accepted to the Grad Expo Conference, February 7th, 2011. Paper
- I passed my proposal defense on December 20th, 2010 at University of Pittsburgh.
- AMIA 2010 paper accepted. paper
- highlight: Homer Warner Best Paper Award at AMIA 2010.
- I was an intern at Intel Research, Santa Clara, CA (Summer 2010).
- UAI 2010 paper accepted. paper
- I received Academic Entrepreneurship Certificate. Certificate
- highlight: Google Best Paper Award at OLCV - CVPR 2010. Award
- University of Pittsburgh Honors Convocation Recognition (2009)!
- 2008 awards: Andrew Mellon Fellowship, CS Research Competition, and CS Day Best Poster! Mellon Fellowship, research competition, poster winner, poster runner-up
- Started as Research Assistant on Conditional Anomaly Detection project at University of Pittsburgh (2007-2011).
- Released PlaSyn — Plastic Synapses simulator for spiking neural networks.
- Started PhD in Machine Learning at University of Pittsburgh with Miloš Hauskrecht!
- MSc. summa cum laude in Computer Science from Comenius University, Bratislava! thesis
- First publication: Evolutionary Feature Selection for Spiking Neural Network Pattern Classifiers at EPIA 2005.
- European Erasmus Scholarship in Lisbon, Portugal (Spring 2005).
- Elected Academic Senate Member at Comenius University, Bratislava (2003-2005).
- Slovak Academy of Sciences Fellowship (2003-2005).
- Started organizing correspondence math seminars (KMS, STROM, SKMS) — continued until 2005.
- 9th place at Programming Contest Zenit (national final).
- First place at Slovak Mathematical Olympiad, regional final (also in 1993 and 1994).
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