Statistical Physics Meets Machine Learning I

Presentations

• Evolution of Language Statistics under Renormalization Group Flow

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 8:00 AM – March 18, 2026, 8:12 AM

  Presenters

  • Roberto Avalos

    • Emory University

  Authors

  • Roberto Avalos

    • Emory University

  • Tankut Can

  View abstract →

• Compression in Neural Networks via Weight Coupling

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 8:12 AM – March 18, 2026, 8:24 AM

  Publication: Quantization and the Bottom of the Loss Landscape (ICML workshop paper); Neural Network Quantization via Weight-Weight Coupling (planned paper)

  Presenters

  • Daniel Bernstein

    • Princeton University

  Authors

  • Daniel Bernstein

    • Princeton University

  • Luca Di Carlo

  • David Schwab

    • The Graduate Center, City University of New York

  View abstract →

• Building effective shallow generative models through side information

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 8:24 AM – March 18, 2026, 8:36 AM

  Presenters

  • Kyle Bojanek

    • University of Chicago

  Authors

  • Kyle Bojanek

    • University of Chicago

  • Stephanie Palmer

    • University of Chicago

  View abstract →

• Implementation of Kolmogorov Flow Matching in a GFlowNet Learning Model

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 8:36 AM – March 18, 2026, 8:48 AM

  Presenters

  • Sergio Cuadra

    • University of Massachusetts Boston

  Authors

  • Sergio Cuadra

    • University of Massachusetts Boston

  • Sho Inaba

    • University of Massachusetts Boston

  • Jacob Adamczyk

    • University of Massachusetts Boston

  • Rahul Kulkarni

    • University of Massachusetts Boston

  View abstract →

• Combinatorial Reasoning: Using physics-inspired methods to improve reasoning on generative language models

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 8:48 AM – March 18, 2026, 9:00 AM

  Publication: [1] M. Esencan et al., "Combinatorial Reasoning: Selecting Reasons in Generative AI Pipelines via Combinatorial Optimization," arXiv:2407.00071 (2024)

  Presenters

  • Mert Esencan

    • University of Oxford

  Authors

  • Mert Esencan

    • University of Oxford

  • Davide Venturelli

    • USRA and NASA Ames Research Center

  • Can Unlu

    • Icosa Computing

  • Tarun Advaith Kumar

  • Alan Ho

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• The geometry and dynamics of annealed optimization in the coherent Ising machine with hidden and planted solutions

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 9:00 AM – March 18, 2026, 9:12 AM

  Presenters

  • Federico Ghimenti

    • Stanfod University

  Authors

  • Federico Ghimenti

    • Stanfod University

  • Adithya Sriram

  • Atsushi Yamamura

    • Stanford University

  • Hideo Mabuchi

  • Surya Ganguli

    • Stanford University

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• Entropic Confinement and Mode Connectivity in Overparameterized Neural Networks

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 9:12 AM – March 18, 2026, 9:24 AM

  Publication: Submitted to ICLR 2026

  Presenters

  • Chase Goddard

    • Princeton University

  Authors

  • Chase Goddard

    • Princeton University

  • Luca Di Carlo

    • Princeton University

  • David Schwab

    • The Graduate Center, City University of New York

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• Tokenization gauge symmetry in language modeling

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 9:24 AM – March 18, 2026, 9:36 AM

  Presenters

  • Kanishk Jain

    • Emory University

  Authors

  • Kanishk Jain

    • Emory University

  • Matthew Day

  • Tankut Can

  View abstract →

• EVE: EigenVector-Based Exploration

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 9:36 AM – March 18, 2026, 9:48 AM

  Publication: EVE: EigenVector-Based Exploration (paper)

  Presenters

  • Adam Kamoski

    • University of Massachusetts Boston

  Authors

  • Adam Kamoski

    • University of Massachusetts Boston

  • Rahul Kulkarni

    • University of Massachusetts Boston

  • Sho Inaba

    • University of Massachusetts Boston

  • Jacob Adamczyk

    • University of Massachusetts Boston

  View abstract →

• Scattering-based Optical Computing

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 9:48 AM – March 18, 2026, 10:00 AM

  Presenters

  • Wolfgang Losert

    • University of Maryland College Park

  Authors

  • Eunji Ko

    • University of Maryland College Park

  • Wolfgang Losert

    • University of Maryland College Park

  View abstract →

• Network architecture can shape in-context learning

  Oral-In-person · Withdrawn

  March 18, 2026, 10:00 AM – March 18, 2026, 10:12 AM

  Presenters

  • Pranav Kantroo

    • Yale University

  Authors

  • Pranav Kantroo

    • Yale University

  • Benjamin Machta

    • Yale University

  View abstract →

• Local Diffusion Models and Phases of Data Distributions

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 10:12 AM – March 18, 2026, 10:24 AM

  Publication: Preprint: arXiv:2508.06614

  Presenters

  • Guangkuo Liu

    • JILA

  Authors

  • Guangkuo Liu

    • JILA

  • Fangjun Hu

    • QuEra Computing Inc.

  • Yifan (Frank) Zhang

    • Princeton University

  • Xun Gao

  View abstract →

• Large Language Models Think in Curved Space

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 10:24 AM – March 18, 2026, 10:36 AM

  Presenters

  • Toni Liu

    • Cornell University

  Authors

  • Toni Liu

    • Cornell University

  • Raphael Sarfati

    • University of Colorado, Boulder

  • Nicolas Boulle

  • Christopher Earls

  View abstract →

• Data coarse graining can improve model performance

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 10:36 AM – March 18, 2026, 10:48 AM

  Publication: A. Nguyen, D. J. Schwab, and V. Ngampruetikorn, arXiv:2509.14498 [cond-mat.stat-mech]

  Presenters

  • Vudtiwat Ngampruetikorn

    • The University of Sydney

  Authors

  • Alex Nguyen

  • David Schwab

    • The Graduate Center, City University of New York

  • Vudtiwat Ngampruetikorn

    • The University of Sydney

  View abstract →

• Variational Inference with Heavy-Tailed Distributions using the Coupled Free Energy

  Oral-In-person

  March 18, 2026, 10:48 AM – March 18, 2026, 11:00 AM

  Publication: Nelson, K., Oliveira, I., Al-Najafi, A., Zhang, F., & Ng, H. K. T. (2025, July 25). Variational inference optimized using the curved geometry of coupled free energy (arXiv:2506.09091). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.09091
  
  Nelson, K. P. (2025, August 9). Coupled entropy: A Goldilocks generalization for complex systems (arXiv:2506.17229). arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.17229

  Presenters

  • Igor Oliveira

    • Universidade Federal de Pernambuco - UFPE

  Authors

  • Igor Oliveira

    • Universidade Federal de Pernambuco - UFPE

  • Kenric Nelson

  • Amenah Najaf

  View abstract →