Fall into ML: Autumn School and Conference on Machine Learning Held at HSE University

© HSE University

On November 1st-3rd, 2022 the International Laboratory of Stochastic Algorithms and High-Dimensional Inference of the HSE Faculty of Computer Science and the Laboratory of Methods for Big Data Analysis with the support of HSE AI Centre and the Russian Science Foundation organized the first autumn school and conference on artificial intelligence ‘Fall into ML’. The new format of the event included a school for students and young researchers.

The following mini-courses and lectures were delivered by leading researchers from HSE University and Skoltech:

 Optimal Transport and Generative modeling based on stochastic processes (Evgeny Burnaev, Skoltech)

 Posterior sampling and Bayesian bootstrap: sample complexity and regret bounds (Alexey Naumov, HSE University)

 Tensors and machine learning (Ivan Oseledets, Skoltech)

 Introduction to diffusion models (Dmitry Vetrov, HSE University)

The conference was held at the HSE Cultural Centre, with leading Russian scientists in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning, authors of articles at A* level conferences and in leading world-class journals delivering more than 20 reports on current areas of AI research in six sections related to different areas of machine learning and related topics.

Alexey Naumov, head of the the International Laboratory of Stochastic Algorithms and High-Dimensional Inference, organizer of ‘Fall into ML’

© Mikhail Dmitriev/ HSE University

‘The ‘Fall into ML’ school and conference is a unique event: We managed to bring together the best representatives of Russian science in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The format of the event is similar to a real A* level conference: mini-courses, short reports and a large poster session. All reports and posters were based on articles presented at the conference in 2021-2022 (ICML, NeurIPS, COLT, ICLR, ACL, etc). I hope that the Fall into ML school and conference will become an annual event!’

During the event, awards were given to the winners of the fifth anniversary olympiad ‘Mathematics of Machine Learning’, which was jointly organized by the HSE and Skoltech. First-degree certificates were awarded to Ivan Safonov (HSE Faculty of Computer Sciences), Ekaterina Fadeeva (St. Petersburg State University) and Altan Erdnigor (HSE Faculty of Mathematics). All laureates were enrolled on the Master's programme ‘Math of Machine Learning’ without the need for entrance exams.

© HSE University

There was also a round table meeting, dedicated to the interaction of universities with industrial partners, forms of cooperation between universities aimed at solving problems of the business community, and prospects for long-term research. HSE staff from various departments, representatives of the ‘Digital Economy’, the National Centre for the Development of Artificial Intelligence under the Government of the Russian Federation, the Research Institute ‘Gaseconomica’, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, the Center for Artificial Intelligence, as well as the ‘Yandex’, ‘Renaissance Credit’, ‘SIBUR Digital’ all took part in the event, which was held at Durasov House.

‘The interaction of industrial customers with leading Russian scientists is always relevant,’ says Anna Kozyreva, Director of the project office of the HSE AI Centre. ‘Both scientists and commercial companies understand the importance of practical orientation in the conducted fundamental research. That is why the dialogue between scientists and industry representatives, who discuss relevant ideas for possible cooperation, is always interesting.’

© HSE University

In total, over 250 participants attended ‘Fall into ML’, including students and lecturers from Moscow State University, MIPT, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, NSU, and Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology.

The poster session format, which is a distinctive feature of international A* level conferences, is particularly interesting. Poster sessions allow young scientists to present the results of their research for open defense. Anyone can ask questions at the poster presentations, including world renowned scientists.

© HSE University

Darina Dvinskikh, Associate Professor at HSE Faculty of Computer Science, Speaker

It was a good conference. There were a lot of interesting courses and reports on the use of machine learning in various fields. I think everyone who attended learnt something useful.

Vladislav Podsadny, student of Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, participant

For me, all the reports were interesting. During the two days of school, I got a lot of useful information. I liked Alexey Naumov's lecture the most, because he knows how to win over the audience and deliver the material in a simple, but effective, way. This new information will help me in my further studies, because it’s very useful knowledge in this field.

Ivan Safonov, student of ‘Math of Machine Learning’ master's programme, participant

I liked Dmitry Vetrov's mini-course about diffusion models the most. This is a completely new approach that has significantly improved the previous results in the field of image generation. At the conference, the topics and content of many reports were new to me, but since I plan to go further in this area, it turned out to be useful for me to find out the current results and the range of tasks, as well as to communicate with the authors of the articles.