Reading Group

Given the rapidly changing world of Machine Learning and A.I., the PLAI group is determined to stay up to date and ahead of the curve wherever possible. Each week one member of the group will present on a topic they feel passionate about, these discussions are supported by research papers.

If you are interested in attending our sessions, or would like more information, please reach out to plai-admin@cs.ubc.ca.

Current Semester

2024 – 2025 Academic Year

Fall 2024 (Term 1)

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
September 5thPLAI Reading GroupLarry LiuDirectly Fine-Tuning Diffusion Models on Differentiable RewardsPaper
Link
September 12thMeeting Cancelled– –
September 19thMeeting Cancelled– –
September 26thPhD DefenseVasileios LioutasTowards Realistic Controllable Driving Simulators
October 3rdPLAI Reading GroupJason YooAddressing Loss of Plasticity and Catastrophic Forgetting in Continual LearningPaper
Link
October 10thMeeting Cancelled– –
October 17thPLAI Reading GroupDylan GreenGuiding a Diffusion Model with a Bad Version of ItselfPaper
Link
October 24thMeeting Cancelled– –
October 31stMeeting Cancelled– –
November 7thPLAI Reading GroupVasileios LioutasWere RNNs All We Needed?Paper
Link
November 14thPLAI Reading GroupKe ZhangREBEL: Reinforcement Learning via Regressing Relative RewardsPaper
Link
November 21stMeeting Cancelled– –
November 28thPLAI Reading GroupCharlie HeMINEDOJO: Building Open-Ended Embodied Agents with Internet-Scale KnowledgePaper
Link
December 5thPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachA Unified Framework for U-Net Design and AnalysisPaper
Link
December 12thMeeting Cancelled– –
December 19thPLAI Reading GroupSaeid NaderipariziTBD

Past Sessions

2023 – 2024 Academic Year

Fall 2023 (Term 1)

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
September 6thGuest PresenterGeoff PleissWe Don’t Understand Ensembles (in the Overparameterized Regime)
September 13thPLAI Reading GroupLarry LiuMultisample Flow Matching: Straightening Flows with Minibatch CouplingsPaper
Link
September 20thPLAI Reading GroupDylan GreenInfoDiffusion: Representation Learning Using Information Maximizing Diffusion ModelsPaper
Link
September 27thPLAI Reading GroupJason YooCan Neural Network Memorization Be Localized?Paper
Link
October 4thMeeting Cancelled– –
October 11thPLAI Reading GroupRyan FayyaziTask Arithmetic in the Tangent Space: Improved Editing of Pre-Trained ModelsPaper
Link
October 18thPLAI Reading GroupVasileios LioutasQ-Transformer: Scalable Offline Reinforcement Learning via Autoregressive Q-FunctionsPaper
Link
October 25thPLAI Reading GroupKe ZhangIs Conditional Generative Modeling all you need for Decision-MakingPaper
Link
November 1stPLAI Reading GroupCharlie HeCones: Concept Neurons in Diffusion Models for Customized GenerationPaper
Link
November 8thPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachCognitive Architectures for Language AgentsPaper
Link
November 15thPLAI Reading GroupMatthew NiedobaConsistency Trajectory Models: Learning Probability Flow ODE Trajectory of DiffusionPaper
Link
November 22ndPLAI Reading GroupSaeid NaderipariziFlow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified FlowPaper
Link
November 29thPLAI Reading GroupWilliam HarveyGeneralization in Diffusion Models Arises from Geometry-Adaptive Harmonic RepresentationPaper
Link
December 6thPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonTemporal Difference Learning for Model Predictive ControlPaper
Link

Winter 2024 (Term 2)

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
January 17thPLAI Reading GroupLarry LiuWhen Do Transformers Shine in RL? Decoupling Memory from Credit AssignmentPaper
Link
January 24thPLAI Reading GroupVasileios LioutasIdempotent Generative NetworkPaper
Link
January 31stPre-ICML Review– –
February 7thPLAI Reading GroupJason YooDDGR: Continual Learning with Deep Diffusion-based Generative ReplayPaper
Link
February 14thPLAI Reading GroupKe ZhangImplicit Q-Learning as an Actor-Critic Method with Diffusion PoliciesPaper
Link
February 21stPLAI Reading GroupCharlie HeMistral of ExpertsPaper
Link
February 28thPLAI Reading GroupMatthew NiedobaAnalyzing and Improving the Training Dynamics of Diffusion ModelsPaper
Link
March 6thPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachCogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI AgentsPaper
Link
March 13thMeeting Cancelled– –
March 20thMeeting Cancelled– –
March 27thPLAI Reading GroupLarry LiuDiscrete Diffusion Modeling by Estimating the Ratios of the Data DistributionPaper
Link
April 3rdPLAI Reading GroupWilliam HarveyScalable Diffusion Models with TransformersPaper
Link
April 10thPLAI Reading GroupSaeid NaderipariziDirect Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward ModelPaper
Link
April 17thPLAI Reading GroupXiaoxuan LiangDetecting, Explaining, and Mitigating Memorization in Diffusion ModelsPaper
Link
April 24thPLAI Reading GroupDylan GreenDiffusion with Forward Models: Solving Stochastic Inverse Problems Without Direct SupervisionPaper
Link

Summer 2024

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
May 1stPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonImitation Is Not Enough: Robustifying Imitation with Reinforcement Learning for Challenging Driving ScenariosPaper
Link
May 8thPLAI Reading GroupJason YooTransformers for Supervised Online Continual LearningPaper
Link
May 15thPLAI Reading GroupVasileios LioutasProbabilistic Inference in Language Models via Twisted Sequential Monte CarloPaper
Link
May 23rdMeeting Cancelled– –
May 30thPLAI Reading GroupKe ZhangNeural Diffusion ProcessesPaper
Link
June 6thMeeting Cancelled– –
June 13thPLAI Reading GroupCharlie HeFast Timing-Conditioned Latent Audio DiffusionPaper
Link
June 20thMeeting Cancelled– –
June 27thPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachParticle Denoising Diffusion SamplerPaper
Link
July 4thPLAI Reading GroupMatthew NiedobaPatch Diffusion: Faster and More Data-Efficient Training of Diffusion ModelsPaper
Link
July 11thMeeting Cancelled– –
July 18thMeeting Cancelled– –
July 25thMeeting Cancelled– –
August 1stMeeting Cancelled– –
August 8thPLAI Reading GroupSaeid NaderipariziReduce, Reuse, Recycle: Compositional Generation with Energy-Based Diffusion models and MCMCPaper
Link
August 15thPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonVideo Prediction Models as Rewards for Reinforcement LearningPaper
Link
August 22ndPLAI Reading GroupXiaoxuan LiangNeural Diffusion ModelsPaper
Link
August 29thPLAI Reading GroupAbigail AzariWhy Simulation Based Inference is a Useful Endeavor for our Science

2022 – 2023 Academic Year

Fall 2022 (Term 1)

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
September 14thPLAI Reading GroupAlexander MeadDetecting Exoplanets via Transit-Time VariationsPaper
Link
September 21stPLAI Reading GroupXiaoxuan LiangEquivariant Diffusion for Molecule Generation in 3DPaper
Link
September 28thPLAI Reading GroupDylan GreenCARD: Classification and Regression Diffusion ModelsPaper
Link
October 5thMeeting Cancelled– –
October 12thPLAI Reading GroupRyan FayyaziThe Neural Race Reduction: Dynamics of Abstraction in Gated NetworksPaper
Link
October 19thPLAI Reading GroupVasileios LioutasTransformers are Sample Efficient World ModelsPaper
Link
October 26thMeeting Cancelled– –
November 2ndPLAI Reading GroupWill HarveyText-to-3D using 2D DiffusionPaper
Link
November 9thPLAI Reading GroupSaeid NaderipariziVQVAE and VQGANPaper
Link
November 16thPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonRL as Sequence Modeling and Decision TransformersPaper
Link
November 23rdPLAI Reading GroupJustice SefasMartingale Posterior DistributionsPaper
Link
November 30thNeurIPS Conference– –
December 7thGuest SpeakerTilman TroesterAstronomy & Machine LearningLink To
Slides
December 14thPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachMass Editing Memory in a TransformerPaper
Link
December 30thMeeting Cancelled– –

Winter 2023 (Term 2)

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
January 4thPLAI Reading GroupLarry LiuWhy Decision Transformers and RvS Fail in Stochastic EnvironmentsPaper
Link
January 9thPLAI Reading GroupJason YooContinual Deep Learning by Functional Regularisation of Memorable PastPaper
Link
January 16thPLAI Reading GroupVasileios LioutasDichotomy of Control: Separating What You Can Control from What You CannotPaper
Link
January 23rdPLAI Reading GroupRyan FayyaziContinual Learning via Sequential Function-Space Variational InferencePaper
Link
January 30thMeeting Cancelled– –
February 6thThesis Proposal DefenseAndreas MunkAccelerating Bayesian Inference in Probabilistic Programming
February 13thMeeting Cancelled– –
February 20thMeeting Cancelled – –
February 27thPLAI Reading GroupXiaoxuan LiangReturn-Conditioned Supervised Learning for Offline Reinforcement LearningPaper
Link
March 6thPLAI Reading GroupMatthew NiedobaFlow Matching for Generative ModellingPaper
Link
March 13thPLAI Reading GroupSaeid NaderipariziDiffusion Schrödinger Bridge with Applications to Score-Based Generative ModelingPaper
Link
March 20thMeeting Cancelled – –
March 27thPLAI Reading GroupWilliam HarveyConsistency ModelsPaper
Link
April 3rdPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonReachability Constrained Reinforcement LearningPaper
Link
April 10thMeeting Cancelled – –
April 17thPLAI Reading GroupJustice SefasUnderstanding the Diffusion Objective as a Weighted Integral of ElbosPaper
Link
April 24thPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachMass Editing Memory in a TransformerPaper
Link
May 1stPLAI Reading GroupReuben Cohn-GordonReactive Probabilistic ProgrammingPaper
Link

Summer 2023

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
June 14thPLAI Reading GroupJason YooKNN-Diffusion: Image Generation via Large-Scale RetrievalPaper
Link
June 21stMeeting Cancelled– –
June 28thMeeting Cancelled– –
July 5thPLAI Reading GroupWilliam HarveyFast Training of Diffusion Models with Masked TransformersPaper
Link
July 12thPLAI Reading GroupXiaoxuan LiangDiffusion Posterior Sampling for General Noisy Inverse ProblemsPaper
Link
July 19thPLAI Reading GroupMatthew NiedobaAny-to-Any Generation via Composable DiffusionPaper
Link
July 26thMeeting Cancelled – –
August 2ndMeeting Cancelled – –
August 9thMeeting Cancelled – –
August 16thMeeting Cancelled – –
August 23rdPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonPID-Inspired Inductive Biases for Deep Reinforcement Learning in Partially Observable Control TasksPaper
Link

2021 – 2022 Academic Year

Fall 2021 (Term 1)

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
September 2ndPLAI Reading GroupAdam ScibiorParticle Approximations of the Score and Observed Information Matrix in
State Space Models with Application to Parameter Estimation		Paper
Link
September 9thPLAI Reading GroupRyan FayyaziLearning to Continually LearnPaper
Link
September 16thPLAI Reading GroupBerend ZwartsenbergObject-Centric Learning with Slot AttentionPaper
Link
September 23rdPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonA Practical Method for Constructing Equivariant Multilayer Perceptrons
for Arbitrary Matrix Groups		Paper
Link
September 30thMeeting Cancelled– –
October 7thPLAI Reading GroupBoyan BeronovNatural Graph NetworksPaper
Link
October 14thPLAI Reading GroupWill HarveyProgressive Distillation for Fast Sampling of Diffusion ModelsPaper
Link
October 21stPLAI Reading GroupAndreas MunkPrimal Wasserstein Imitation LearningPaper
Link
October 28thPLAI Reading GroupVasileios LioutasRethinking Attention with PerformersPaper
Link
November 4thPLAI Reading GroupJustice SefasFlow Network based Generative Models for
Non-Iterative Diverse Candidate Generation		Paper
Link
November 11thMeeting Cancelled– –
November 18thPLAI Reading GroupSaeid NaderipariziScore-based Generative Modeling in Latent SpacePaper
Link
November 25thMeeting Cancelled– –
December 2ndPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachVariational Diffusion ModelsPaper
Link

Winter 2022 (Term 2)

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
January 20thPLAI Reading GroupJason YooAssociative Memories via Predictive CodingPaper
Link
January 27thPLAI Reading GroupLarry LiuGenerating Vehicle Specific Waypoints from a General Probabilistic Driving Planner
February 3rdPLAI Reading GroupRyan FayyaziTutorial on Continual Learning Methods
February 10thMeeting Cancelled– –
February 17thPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonGradients are Not All You NeedPaper
Link
February 24thPLAI Reading GroupBoyan BeronovA Variational Perspective on Diffusion-Based Generative Models and Score MatchingPaper
Link
March 3rdPLAI Reading GroupWill HarveyScore-Based Generative Modeling with Critically-Damped Langevin DiffusionPaper
Link
March 10thAI/ML Job Talk PreparationFrank WoodDC3: A learning method for optimization with hard constraintsPaper
Link
March 17thAI/ML Job Talk PreparationVasileios LioutasInfoVAE: Information Maximizing Variational AutoencodersPaper
Link
March 24thAI/ML Job Talk PreparationJustice SefasSocial Influence as Intrinsic Motivation for Multi-Agent Deep Reinforcement LearningPaper
Link
March 31stPLAI Reading GroupAndreas MunkTutorial on Distributed Training
April 7thInvited SpeakerUros SeljakDeterministic Langevin Monte Carlo for Sampling and Optimization
April 14thMeeting Cancelled– –
April 21stPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachTutorial on Deep Learning with Transformers in Julia
April 28thNeurIPS Draft ReviewingWill et al. / Berend et al.
May 5thNeurIPS Draft ReviewingVasileios et al. / Jason et al.
May 12thNeurIPS Draft ReviewingRyan et al., Christian et al., Adam et al.
May 19thNeurIPS Deadline– –
May 26thPLAI Reading GroupRyan FayyaziProgress Report

Summer 2022

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
June 2ndPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonProgress Report
June 9thPLAI Reading GroupBoyan BeronovProgress Report
June 16thPLAI Reading GroupWill HarveyElucidating the Design Space of Diffusion-Based Generative ModelsPaper
Link
June 23rdMeeting Cancelled– –
June 30thPLAI Reading GroupVasileios LioutasFlow Network based Generative Models for Non-Iterative Diverse Candidate GenerationPaper
Link
July 7thPLAI Reading GroupJustice SefasThe sample size required in importance samplingPaper
Link
July 14thPLAI Reading GroupAndreas MunkProbabilistic Programs with Stochastic ConditioningPaper
Link
July 21stPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachAttention Approximates Sparse Distributed MemoryPaper
Link
July 28thMeeting Cancelled– –
August 4thPLAI Reading GroupLarry LiuLanguage Model CascadesPaper
Link
August 11thPLAI Reading GroupJason YooPredictive Coding: A Theoretical and Experimental ReviewPaper
Link
August 18thPLAI Reading GroupMatthew NiedobaPlanning with Diffusion for Flexible Behaviour SynthesisPaper
Link

2020 – 2021 Academic Year

Fall 2020 (Term 1)

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
September 11thPLAI Reading GroupPeyman BateniDistilling the Knowledge in a Neural NetworkPaper
Link
September 18thPLAI Reading GroupMikeInformation Asymmetry in KL-Regularized RLPaper
Link
September 25thPLAI Reading GroupJason YooReinforcement Learning Upside Down: Don’t Predict Rewards –
Just Map Them to Actions		Paper
Link
October 2ndICLR Deadline– –
October 9thPLAI Reading GroupAndyTuning-free Plug-and-Play Proximal Algorithm for
Inverse Imaging Problems		Paper
Link
October 16thMeeting Cancelled– –
October 23rdProbProg Conference– –
October 30thMeeting Cancelled– –
November 6thPLAI Reading GroupVaden MasraniInvolutive MCMC: a Unifying FrameworkPaper
Link
November 13thPLAI Reading GroupVaden MasraniInvolutive MCMC: a Unifying Framework (Cont.)Paper
Link
November 20thPLAI Reading GroupAndreas MunkAdversarial Lipschitz RegulationPaper
Link
November 27thExchange Seminar Helge Rhodin’s Group
December 4thPLAI Reading GroupWill HarveyMetalearned Neural MemoryPaper
Link
December 16thExchange SeminarHelge Rhodin’s Group

Winter 2021 (Term 2)

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
January 14thPLAI Reading GroupSaeid NaderipariziMarkovian Score Climbing: Variational Inference with KL(p||q)Paper
Link
January 21stPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachAI Feynman 2.0: Pareto-Optimal Symbolic Regression
Exploiting Graph Modularity		Paper
Link
January 28thPLAI Reading GroupAdam ScribiorPyro: Deep Universal Probabilistic ProgrammingPaper
Link
February 4thICML Deadline– –
February 11thPLAI Reading GroupRyan FayyaziLearning Compositional Rules via Neural Program SynthesisPaper
Link
February 18thPLAI Reading GroupPhilippe SolodovMeta-Learning Stationary Stochastic Process Prediction with
Convolutional Neural Processes		Paper
Link
February 25thPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonSUNRISE: A Simple Unified Framework for Ensemble Learning
in Deep Reinforcement Learning		Paper
Link
March 4thPLAI Reading GroupBerend ZwartsenbergLanguage Models are Few-Short LearnersPaper
Link
March 11thPLAI Reading GroupBoyan BeronovAnnealed Flow Transport Monte CarloPaper
Link
March 18thPLAI Reading GroupPeyman BateniAn Image is Worth 16×16 Words: Transformers for
Image Recognition at Scale		Paper
Link
March 25thPLAI Reading GroupMikeDifferentiable Particle Filtering via Entropy-Regularized
Optimal Transport		Paper
Link
April 1stPLAI Reading GroupJason YooSequential Neural ProcessPaper
Link
April 8thPLAI Reading GroupVaden MasraniGeneralized Variationally Inference: Tree Arguments for
Deriving New Posteriors		Paper
Link
April 15thPLAI Reading GroupAndreas MunkPhysics-Guided Neural Networks (PGNN): An Application in
Lake Temperature Modeling		Paper
Link
April 22ndPLAI Reading GroupWill HarveyApproximate Inference for the Loss-Calibrated BayesianPaper
Link
April 29thPLAI Reading GroupSaeid NaderipariziMeta-Learning with Implicit GradientsPaper
Link
May 6thPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachOn the Spectral Bias of Neural NetworksPaper
Link

Summer 2021

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
June 10thPLAI Reading GroupAdam ScribiorDiCE: The Infinitely Differentiable Monte-Carlo EstimatorPaper
Link
June 17thPLAI Reading GroupVasileios LioutasLinformer: Self-Attention with Linear ComplexityPaper
Link
June 24thPLAI Reading GroupRyan FayyaziNeurosymbolic Transformers for Multi-Agent CommunicationPaper
Link
July 1stMeeting Cancelled– –
July 8thPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonDecoupling Representation Learning from
Reinforcement Learning		Paper
Link
July 15thPLAI Reading GroupBerend ZwartsenbergNeural Ordinary Differential EquationsPaper
Link
July 22ndPLAI Reading GroupBoyan BeronovAutomatic Structured Variational InferencePaper
Link
July 29thPLAI Reading GroupWill HarveyVery Deep VAEs Generalize Autoregressive Models and
can Outperform Them on Images		Paper
Link
August 5thPLAI Reading GroupAndreas MunkScalable Sampling for Discrete DistributionsPaper
Link
August 12thPLAI Reading GroupVaden Masraniq-Paths: Generalizing the Geometric Annealing Path using
Power Means		Paper
Link
August 19thPLAI Reading GroupSaeid NaderipariziScore-Based Generative Modeling Through
Stochastic Differential Equations		Paper
Link
August 26thPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachMulti-Agent Training Beyond Zero-Sum with
Correlated Equilibrium Meta-Solvers		Paper
Link

2019 – 2020 Academic Year

Winter 2020 Term 2

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
February 25thExchange SeminarMichiel van de Panne’s Group
March 3rdMeeting Cancelled– –
March 10thPLAI Reading GroupPeyman PateniUnsupervised Meta-Learning For Few-Shot
Image Classification		Paper
Link
March 16thExchange SeminarTrevor Campbell’s Group
March 27thExchange SeminarMark Schmidt’s Group
March 31stExchange SeminarMichiel van de Panne’s GroupPlanning as Inference in Epidemiological ModelsPaper
Link
April 7thPLAI Reading GroupBoyan BeronovVariational Predictive Information BottleneckPaper
Link
April 14thExchange SeminarKevin Leyton-Brown’s Group
April 24thPLAI Reading GroupVaden MasraniExact Rate-Distortion in Autoencoders via
Echo Noise		Paper
Link
May 1stExchange SeminarMark Schmidt’s Group
May 5thPLAI Reading GroupWill HarveyThe Functional Neural ProcessPaper
Link
May 12thPLAI Reading GroupAndreas MunkGenerative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of
the Data Distribution		Paper
Link
May 19thExchange SeminarKevin Leyton-Brown’s Group

Summer 2020

DateFormatPresenterTopicPaper
June 16thExchange SeminarKevin Leyton-Brown’s Group
June 26thPLAI Reading GroupJason YooImportance Weighted Hierarchical Variational InferencePaper
Link
July 3rdPLAI Reading GroupAndrew WarringtonLearning Existing Social Conventions via
Observationally Augmented Self-Play		Paper
Link
July 10thPLAI Reading GroupVaden MasraniTarget–Aware Bayesian Inference: How to Beat
Optimal Conventional Estimators		Paper
Link
July 17thPLAI Reading GroupChristian WeilbachInference Trees
July 24thPLAI Reading GroupAdam ScribiorCounterfactual Probabilistic ProgrammingPaper
Link
July 31stPLAI Reading GroupMikeDiversity is All You Need: Learning Skills without
a Reward Function		Paper
Link
August 7thPLAI Reading GroupSaied NaderipariziConditional Neural ProcessesPaper
Link
August 14thPLAI Current Project PitchPLAI Group (Everyone)
August 21stPLAI Reading GroupBoyan BeronovImplicit Regularization in Deep Learning: A View
from Function Space		Paper
Link
August 28thPLAI Reading GroupWilder LavingtonMaximum a Posteriori Policy OptimisationPaper
Link