News

This page contains some news. This is by no means comprehensive. For more thorough descriptions, check the yearly report of activities.

Beyond 2020, please visit the website of our renewed team Scool.

TOC: 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005
PhD and HdR defenses
Yearly reports of activites

2020

• Nov. 1st: SequeL is finished; Scool is born.
• Oct 31st: last day of existence of SequeL.
• Oct 30th: Édouard Laurent defends his PhD: he is the last SequeL Phd!
• NeurIPS decisions have flown: SequeL has 6 papers accepted at NeurIPS this year. Édouard Laurent will give an oral presentation for his paper with O-A. Maillard and D. Efimov.
• May 19th: Guillaume Gautier defends his PhD.
• Jan 28th: Florian Strub defends his PhD.
• Jan: Associate Team Data Collection for Smart Crop Management is accepted for funding from Inria. This is a joint project with Fun, and Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, India. Managed by Philippe Preux.

2019

• Jean-Bastien Grill defended his PhD on Dec. 19th.
• Nicolas Carrara defended his PhD on Dec. 18th.
• Lilian Besson defended his PhD on Nov. 20th in CentraleSupélec Rennes.
• Mahsa Asadi gets the best student paper award at ACML 2019, for her work done while interning in SequeL in 2018.
• Ronan Fruit defends his PhD on Nov. 6th.
• We are organizing the Reinforcement Learning Summer Scool in Lille, July 1-12, 2019.
• Michal Valko is co-organizing a workshop The power of graphs in machine learning and sequential decision making, in London, June 3th-4th, 2019.
• Exploratory action “Sequential collaborative learning of recommandations for sustainable gardening” accepted for funding by Inria. Managed by Odalric-Ambrym Maillard.
• March 2019: Ronan Fruit gives a tutorial at ALT.
• March 2019: project B4H (Bandits for Health) accepted by i-site Lille, in collaboration with researchers at the University Hospital of Lille (CHU), and Inserm. More information through this link.
• Feb. 2019: Odalric-Ambrym Maillard defends his hdr.

2018

• Merwan Barlier defends his PhD on Dec. 14th
• Romain Warlop defends his PhD on Oct. 19th
• SequeL is on the AI cutting-edge
• SequeL presents 4 papers at NIPS this year. We also co-organize the Visually Grounded Interaction and Language workshop. Matteo Pirotta is among the top 200 best reviewers for NIPS 2018, as well as former SequeLer Daniele Calandriello
• Philippe Preux is among the 24 “level-2 Distinguished Senior Program Committee Members” for IJCAI 2018

• SequeL presents 5 papers at ICML this year: see you in Stockholm! We also co-organize the Prediction and Generative Modeling in Reinforcement Learning ICML workshop. We are also proud to have 2 SequeL members listed among the top 10 reviewers for ICML 2018 (É. Kauffman and M. Valko), 1 former member too (A. Lazaric), as well as a former post-doc among the outstanding reviewer (G. Neu).
• We also co-organize the ITS workshop
• Matteo Pirotta is awarded one of the 8 Criteo Faculty Research Awards: more information
• Daniele Calandriello receives the AFIA award for his PhD thesis.
• M. Valko is  speaking at International Workshop on Optimization and Machine Learning at CIMI, Toulouse (September 10-13th, 2018)
• SequeL is selected to organize EWRL 2018, 3rd EWRL in Lille in its history (after 2008, and 2015). We will be happy to welcome you in Lille in October.
• We are organizing Optimizing Human Learning workshop at ITS 2018.
• J. Mary and M. Valko are speaking at  Journée Big data, Polytech’Lille on March 22, 2018.
• We are co-organizing CNRS Summer school on Networks, Graphs, and Machine Learning (RESCOM 2018)  in Porquerolles, June 18-22, 2018.
• Adobe research highlights our work on online influence maximization
• Chist-Era Delta project accepted and is about to begin. Partners are University Pompeu Fabra (coordination), University of Liège (Belgium), University of Leoben (Austria), SequeL.

2017

• Julien Seznec, our PhD student publishes an article in Les Echos that discusses ML for education.
• CNRS publishes a French article about zonotope sampling presented at ICML.
• Daniele Calandriello and Julien Perolat defend their PhD on Dec. 18th
• Marc Abeille defends his PhD on Dec 13th
• Pratik Gajane defends his PhD on Nov. 14th
• Guesswhat?! demonstrated at the 50th Inria anniversary
• 9 papers accepted at NIPS 2017: see you in Long Beach!
• Équipes associeés Nord-Europeénnes 2017 led by Michal Valko was accepted to work with the team of Alexandra Carpentier on the project on Adaptive allocation of resources for recommender systems (acronym: Allocate)
• SequeL has 6 papers accepted at ICML 2017
• GuessWhat!: computers learn to talk
• SequeL has one spot-light presentation at CVPR 2017 (selection rate for spotlight is 5%)
• SequeL displays a strong presence at AI&Stats 2017, presenting 6 papers this year.
• Alessandro Lazaric interviewed on machine learning driven e-learning
• On Jan 1st, Matteo Pirotta joins the group as a post-doc, working on the ANR ExtraLearn project

2016

• Frédéric Guillou defends his PhD on Dec. 2nd
• On Dec 1st, Ralph Bourdoukan joins the group as a post-doc
• Tomáš Kocák defends his PhD on Nov. 28th
• On Nov. 1st, James Ridgway joins the group as a post-doc
• Odalric-Ambrym Maillard moves from Saclay to SequeL, bringing with him is brand new ANR JCJC Badass.
• June 2016: Michal Valko defends his habilitation à diriger les recherches
• April, 2016: Alessandro Lazaric is an invited speaker at DALI 2016
• January 11-12th, 2016: Emilie Kaufmann and Michal Valko were invited speakers at Multi-armed Bandit Workshop
• H2020 project Babyrobot accepted for funding.

2015

• December 14th, 2015: Marta Soare defends her PhD
• November 24th, 2015: Jérémie Mary defends his HDR
• November, 2015: Nuukik awarded after its succesfull collaboration with Jérémie Mary, and SequeL
• Chist-Era IGLU accepted for funding. Partners are University of Sheerbrooke (Canada, coordinator), University of Mons (Belium), Inria (France), University of Lille (France), KTH (sweden), Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain).
• November 2015: Émilie Kaufmann joins SequeL as CNRS junior researcher
• October 2015: Christos Dimitrakakis joins SequeL as assistant professor
• September 2015: Bilal Piot joins SequeL as assistant professor
• June 24th, 2015: ICML is closing in: Lille, center of the ML world!
• Check the binaire blog on Le Monde website (in French) “L’apprentissage automatique : pas à pas
• May 2015: in press: Michal Valko explains why he teaches machine learning at École Normale Supérieure
• May 2015: Victor Gabillon (former PhD student in SequeL) and Bilal Piot (currently post-doc in SequeL) are both ranked 2^nd at the Artificial Intelligence French Association (AFIA) price.
• February 1st, 2015: SequeL has been officially renewed for a new period of 4 years. This third period of life of SequeL begins on Feb 1st, 2015 and lasts until December 31st, 2018. At that time, SequeL will end as an INRIA team-project.
• January 2015:
  • researcher positions at INRIA are open. 3 CR positions available in Lille.
  • 3 assistant professor positions open at the university possibly in relation with SequeL
  • Engineer position for a contract of 3 years.
  • Post-doc and PhD
• Jan, 2015: associate team EduBand with CMU, Pittsburgh, led by Alessandro Lazaric, is accepted for 3 years from now on.

2014

• Dec 18th: Olivier Nicol defends his PhD thesis
• Dec 17th-19th: Lihong Li visits us.
• Nov 19th-20th: Mike Bowling visits us.
• Oct 12th, 2014: Frédéric Guillou wins the ACM RecSys challenge. See pictures here. sur le site INRIA
• ANR JCJC ExtraLearn accepted for Alessandro Lazaric.
• July 24th: More on our work with Deezer
• July 1st, 2014: Boris Baldassari defends his PhD
• June 12th, 2014: Victor Gabillon defends his PhD
• June 11th, 2014: Mohammad Ghavamzadeh defends his Habilitation à diriger les recherches
• May 2014: Olivier Pietquin was selected to Institut Universitaire de France for research excellence.
• May 2014: INRIA advertizes our collaboration with Deezer
• May 2014: Rémi Coulom in wired and on slate.

2013

• Dec, 2013: Jérémie Mary and the behavior on the Internet
• Nov. 18th, 2013: Azadeh Khaleghi defends her PhD
• Oct. 2013: Azadeh Khaleghi receives an E. M. Gold Award for her paper at ALT 2013
• June 2013: announcement from the IMLS: SequeL will host ICML 2015 in Lille, France from July 6th to Sat. July 11th, 2015
• June 2013 Alexandra Carpentier PhD is awarded with a 1st accessit of the Prix de thèse de l’AFIA 2013.
• May 2013: INRIA publishes an article about Face Recognition
• April 2013: a new, stricking, victory of Crazy Stone against a human player (aussi en français)

2012

• November 30th, 2012: Christophe Salperwyck defends his PhD
• October 5th, 2012: Alexandra Carpentier defends her PhD
• Sep 1^st, 2012: Michal Valko joins SequeL as an INRIA junior researcher
• June 21^st, 2012: J-F. Hren defends his PhD.
• June 2012 Odalric Maillard recoit le Prix de thèse de l’AFIA 2012.
• Mar 2012: the exploration / exploitation challenge is open.
  • An outcome is the workshop new challenges for exploration & exploitation at ICML 2012

2011

• Dec 19^th, 2011: Daniil Ryabko defends his Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches
• Oct 3^th, 2011: Odalric Ambrym-Maillard defends his Phd
• Jul 2^nd, 2011: Olivier Nicol and Jérémie Mary rank first at the 2^nd round of the Exploration & Exploitation Challenge
• May 8^th, 2011: Olivier Nicol ranks 1st at the 1^st round of the Exploration & Exploitation Challenge; 2^nd is Christophe Salperwyck currently working on his PhD in SequeL and Orange Labs; 5^th is Jérémie Mary, assistant professor, yet another SequeL member.
• Sébastien Bubeck ranks 2^nd at the price of the French PhD in Artificial Intelligence (AFIA), 2011
• Sébastien Bubeck receives the Jacque Neveu 2011 award (best PhD in statistics)

2010

• Nov 26^th 2010: Sébastien Bubeck has been ranked 2nd for the 2010 Gilles Kahn award (best PhD in computer science)
• starting Sep. 14^th 2010, Peter Auer visits SequeL during 10 days
• The cover of the July 2010 Pour la Science magazine advertize Rémi Coulom’s paper about ranking in games and sports
• Sébastien Bubeck defends his PhD on June 10^th, 2010 at the ENS-Ulm. He is the first student to defend a PhD in SequeL.
• Laszlo Gyorfi visits us on March 19^th.
• from Feb 4^th to Feb 11^th, 2010, Boris Ryabko is visiting SequeL during 10 days
• V. Gabillon, J. Mary, and Ph. Preux received the best paper award at the 10^e Extraction, Gestion des Connaissances (EGC) for their paper “Affichage de publicités sur des portails web”

2009

• S. Bubeck receives the best student paper award at COLT’2009.

2008

• Fall 2008: R. Coulom’s Crazy Stone wins against a human expert
• Sep 2008: Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS) at Île de Ré, organized by M. Davy and J. Mary
• June-July 2008: SequeL organizes the 8th European Workshop on Reinforcement Learning
• Jan 2008: creation of the Predict & Control spin-off by P-A. Coquelin

2007

• 2007: R. Coulom’s Crazy Stone becomes a valuable opponent for a human being at the 19×19 Go game. He is awarded with silver medal.
• Jul 1st, 2007: SequeL is officially created as an INRIA team-project.

2006

• Apr 3rd, 2006: SequeL is created as an INRIA team, located in Lille.

2005

• Spring 2005: M. Davy, R. Munos, Ph. Preux meet and begin to talk about creating SequeL.

PhD and HdR defenses

• Oct. 2020: Édouard Leurent defends his PhD (on tel)
• May 2020: Guillaume Gautier defends his PhD
• Jan. 2020: Florian Strub defends his PhD (on tel)
• Dec. 2019: Jean-Bastien Grill defends his PhD
• Dec. 2018: Merwan Barlier defends his PhD
• Oct. 2018: Romain Warlop defends his PhD (on tel)
• Dec. 2017: Daniele Calandriello defends his PhD (on tel)
• Dec. 2017: Julien Perolat defends his PhD (on tel)
• Dec. 2017: Marc Abeille defends his PhD (on tel)
• Nov. 2017: Pratik Gajane defends his PhD (on tel)
• Dec. 2017: Frédéric Guillou defends his PhD (on tel)
• Nov. 2016: Tomáš Kocák defends his PhD (on tel)
• June 2016: Michal Valko defends his HdR (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01359757)
• July 2016: Hadrien Glaude defends his PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01374080)
• Dec 2015: Marta Soare defends her PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01249224v1)
• Oct 2015: Jérémie Mary defends his HdR (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01374729)
• May 2015: Amir Sani defends his PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01256178)
• Dec 18^th, 2014: Olivier Nicol defends his PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01297407)
• July 1^st, 2014: Boris Baldassari defends his PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01297400)
• June 12^th, 2014: Victor Gabillon defends his PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01297386)
• June 11^th, 2014: Mohammad Ghavamzadeh defends his Habilitation à diriger les recherches (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/)
• Nov. 18^th, 2013: Azadeh Khaleghi defends her PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00920184v1)
• November 30^th, 2012: Christophe Salperwyck defends his PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00845655)
• Oct 5^th, 2012: Alexandra Carpentier defends her PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00844361v1)
• Jun 21^st, 2012: Jean-François Hren defends his PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00845898v1)
• Dec 19^th, 2011 Daniil Ryabko defends his HdR (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00675680v2)
• Oct 3^th, 2011: Odalric Ambrym-Maillard defends his PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00845410v1)
• July 8^th, 2011: Manuel Loth defends his PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00845441v1)
• 2011: Nicolas Viandier defends his PhD (https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00664264v1)

Yearly reports of activities

• The report on 2020 activities will be available on Scool website.
• 2019 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2018 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2017 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2016 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2015 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2014 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2013 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2012 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2011 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2010 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2009 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2008 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2007 on-line version, and the pdf version
• 2006 on-line version, and the pdf version