ICLR Paper Discussion w/ AI Research Collective & DataLab at Protege
A high-signal reading group for AI researchers to gather for discussion on top papers.
Peer Discussion:
Actor-Curator: Co-adaptive curricula via policy-improvement bandits for post-training presented by Jonathan Li visiting student at CalTech & PhD at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, advised by Yisong Yue. Winner of Outstanding Paper award for Logical Reasoning of LLM Workshop at ICLR 2026
Toward Expert Financial QA via Self-Improving RAG presented by Junjie Xiong, Berkeley RISE Lab advised by Kevin Miao.
Keynote Presentation:
RF-DETR: Neural Architecture Search for Real-Time Detection Transformers presented by Peter Robicheaux, ML Lead at Roboflow. RF-DETR is a light-weight specialist detection transformer that discovers accuracy-latency Pareto curves for any target dataset with weight-sharing neural architecture search.
Pre-reading is encouraged!
Event Logistics
Doors open at 4:30, presentations will begin at 5:00.
Doors close at 7:30.
Dinner and drinks will be provided!
This discussion is supported by DataLab at Protege, a team of research scientists committed to bridging the gap between research theory and data deployment to push the frontier of AI forward.
In previous sessions, the AI Research Collective brought together AI researchers and ML scientists from Meta, AWS AGI, Google DeepMind, Apple and top university minds from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley.
Who it's for: ML researchers, PhDs, and practitioners working close to the frontier. Background in Learning Reinforcement helps, but what matters is showing up with grasp of the pre-read and curiosity for the topics.
Format: In-person. Light food and drinks provided. ~15 minutes per paper, with a designated reader to set context and the rest of the room driving the discussion.
When: May 21st · 4:30 doors open
Where: SF - Address shared with attendees after accepted
Hosted by DataLab at Protege.
As always, food and drink, engaging conversation, and incredible company will all be provided!
Please be advised: Unfortunately, space is very limited at these community events and we can not always accept everyone we would like to. If you are not accepted to this event, please keep applying! We appreciate your application tremendously and we are looking forward to seeing you at a future event very soon!
The AI Collective is a global non-profit building the human layer for the AI era. We unite 200,000+ leaders, builders, and stakeholders across 100+ forums worldwide to democratize the frontier, build trust, and coordinate how society navigates the rapid acceleration of technological progress.
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