My new policy: if someone asks me to read something, I ask them how they used AI in creating it, and what validation/processing they applied to the AI outputs. (I disclose the same.) Been burned by giving too much attention to (undisclosed) slop folks have sent me...

We spoke with Prof Santhoshini Velusamy about her work in streaming algorithms and algorithmic game theory. In this Q&A she discusses her research, advice for aspiring computer scientists, and what excites her about joining the Cheriton School of Computer Science: cs.uwaterloo.ca/news/q-and-a...

Keep the OpenReview staff in your thoughts, as they prepare for authors of 25,000+ papers all checking the website at the same time... (...not once, but twice in the next week!) Or even better, make a donation to OpenReview: openreview.net/donate

Some people go through life so joylessly

So who's gonna set up the Polymarket for when ICML decisions are gonna drop? 👀📈⏳📉

Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com has won the 2026 Presburger Award! This honour recognizes his exceptional contributions to theoretical CS, notably his development of computationally efficient algorithms for fundamental estimation tasks under robustness constraints. cs.uwaterloo.ca/news/gautam-...

I am honoured (and still a bit stunned) to receive the 2026 Presburger Award from @eatcs.bsky.social. This recognizes 1 or 2 young scientists for outstanding contributions in theoretical CS This honour is shared w my collaborators, students, institutions, & research community 1/7

The 2026 Presburger Award for Young Scientists goes to Vincent Cohen-Addad and @gautamkamath.com 🥳🎉 You can read the laudatio here:

An aperiodic reminder: there's no reason or justification to try to obfuscate your email on your academic website. None. Don't do it. Stop. "You can contact me at <first initial> dot <solve a wordle> at blah dot edu"? Spammers will easily do it. But other academics, journal editors? We'll give up.

Had a great time chatting with Samuel Greengard about erasing digital memory in his Communications of the ACM article. Check it out! cacm.acm.org/news/is-it-p...

It's 2026. I received a copy of IEEE BITS magazine in the mail. It contains my robustness article that was accepted in 2025. The magazine date is September 2024, before I finished writing the article🤔 Separately, my toddler was excited to get a "book" in the mail ft. his dad

Congratulations to the winners of the #ICLR2026 Outstanding Paper Award! It was an honour to chair the committee, the entire team did a great job. We recognized two outstanding papers and one honorable mention. Check out the blog post for more: blog.iclr.cc/2026/04/23/a...

Interested in being the CEO of ACM? "Salary Range: An anticipated salary commensurate with experience will be negotiated in the range of $500,000 - $675,000 with the potential for bonuses." How about now? www.acm.org/about-acm/ce...

FORC 2026 has an excellent set of accepted papers, topics ranging from privacy, fairness, and calibration, to mechanism design, reasoning, and watermarking. Check 'em out at the conference on June 3 - 5 at Harvard. Registration is open (and free!). Travel support deadline: 4/24

Interesting YouTube feature. Actually, I was emotionally manipulated into playing this video. Specifically, my toddler asked me very cutely to play the "fire truck song, please"

The ACM Transactions on Algos now has the Harold N. Gabow Annual Best Paper Award, for research contributions with lasting significance in algos. Hal Gabow, an amazing algos researcher, was founding editor of TALG, and helped establish this award. Thanks Hal! (Submit yr best papers to TALG!) 1/n

My most "unc" opinion is that nametags at events ought be mandatory. Who among us hasn't had that awkward experience where you recognize a person, but have no idea who they are or where you met them?

Hotel booking for #ICML2026 is now open! Be sure to book through the official link: this gives you group pricing for the contracted accommodations, and helps support the conference. Beat the rush before paper notifications! Link: book.resiada.com/43rdICML2026...

The worst thing is when you engage in unhealthy behaviours and then you get majorly rewarded for it.

I added a travel section to my website. Now you know where to get all my hot chicken sando recommendations in real life (though today, I'm looking for tacos 🌮🌮🌮)

The program chairs for #SaTML2027 will be Fabio Pierazzi (@fbpierazzi.bsky.social) and Florian Tramèr! We're in for a great conference under their leadership.

We're excited to announce the 44 workshops and 4 affinity workshops at #ICML2026! Read the blog post to see what they are, and learn more about the selection process. This year was exceptionally selective, with 247 submissions but only capacity to host 44 workshops blog.icml.cc/2026/04/06/a...

SaTML is looking for a host for #SaTML2027! If you're interested in bringing SaTML to a city near you, please fill out this form by April 15! 🏘️🏙️🏡🌆 docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

"I had no business putting my name on something I didn't understand" Remarkable that Haliey Welch (Hawk Tuah Girl) now has more commitment to authorship integrity than many ML researchers

Announcing the #ICML2026 tutorials! All ten tutorials will be presented the first day of the conference, Monday July 6. Read the blog post for more details on the selection process! blog.icml.cc/2026/04/02/a...

Northwestern will be hosting a summer school in high-dimensional probability & applications Ft. excellent speakers: Eliran Subag (Weizmann), Konstantin Tikhomirov (CMU), Aukosh Jagannath (Waterloo), Will Perkins (Georgia Tech) Travel support is available! sites.northwestern.edu/highdimensio...

#ICML2026 supports parents attending the conference! - nursing infants and children 14 to 17 may attend the conference for free with their guardian - free childcare for children up to 13, while availability lasts -- registration is open now! icml.cc/Conferences/...

Google's Paper Assistant Tool was extremely popular, giving AI feedback on ~4500 submissions prior to the #ICML2026 deadline. Results were positive! 92% of participants said they'd use it again, and 73% rated the feedback as helpful. Read the post for more details: blog.icml.cc/2026/03/30/r...

Have modern LLMs learned to make April Fools jokes on April 1? Or have they learned that these are cringe artifacts of the early 2000's? Let's wait and see.

Yep. g.co/gemini/share...

As co-comms chair of ICML 2026 (w @kgorman.bsky.social), I'm super proud of how transparent we've been able to be on all of the (bold!) decisions made. Thanks to all the organizers (esp PC chairs) for being aligned on this. The community deserves to understand these important decisions

My floor of receipts when I'm doing reimbursements

CS theory conferences used to be single blind, though recently (in the last 5-10 years) they moved to lightweight double blind. 1 benefit of single blind: authors can't submit trash without taking a reputational hit. It's increasingly clear that paper submission can't be "free."

Happy Ugadi, Nowruz, and Eid al-Fitr! All three are on March 19 and 20 this year, despite being determined by lunisolar, solar, and lunar calendars. Gemini tells me this alignment happens once every ~300 years.

To ensure compliance w peer-review policies, ICML has removed 795 reviews (1% of total) by reviewers who used LLMs when they explicitly agreed to not. Consequently, 497 papers (2% of all submissions) of these (reciprocal) reviewers have been desk rejected Details in blog post 👇

The ACM Turing Award will be announced tomorrow. Any guesses on who won it?

Someone's having a bad day

Live, from New York...

Me: Gemini, create a dozen Google spreadsheets in this Drive folder and populate them in this way. Gemini:

If the world has you down, getting some exercise, spending time with your loved ones, and eating comfort food will do the trick. In my case it was taking my toddler to soccer and then Chick-fil-A. Find your own.

🎨 Introducing the TMLR Beyond PDF Editor, a web-based editor for creating Beyond PDF submissions! 🚀 Zero setup + live preview + download & import. 🤝 Compatible with local compilation. 🎉 Thanks to Hugo Larochelle, @gautamkamath.com, Naila Murray, Nihar B. Shah, and Laurent Charlin!

Wanna earn yourself one of these bad boys? Sign up to be an Action Editor for TMLR! We are also looking for reviewers as well. Please fill out one of the following forms: - Volunteer to action editor: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... - Volunteer to review: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Why does this look like a figure from a NeurIPS paper

In case you had the misconception that Grok was actually a good model, this was in "Today's News" on X. (News story is about Block, not xAI. Jack is the CEO of Block, not xAI, obviously.)

The final keynote at #ALT2026 is Vitaly Feldman! Talking about memorization in learning

Lucky to have Surbhi Goel (@surbhigoel.bsky.social) giving the next keynote talk at #ALT2026!

The Salon goes to #ALT2026 and ShaiFest! At my absolute favourite venue in Toronto, @fieldsinstitute.bsky.social.

Sometimes you gotta split the difference. From Aaron Roth's (@aaroth.bsky.social) plenary talk at #ALT2026

Fantastic post by Colin Raffel, "We Are Over-Indexing on Paper Acceptance," drafted in May 2021 (!) but only posted now. The more things change.. Last sentence: "If you want to judge a researcher’s quality, the only meaningful way is to read their papers and judge for yourself."

The story of people trying to fly to #ALT2026