Foundation Models for Combinatorial Search

We expect from applicants:

an excellent Master degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence or a related discipline

a background in both the theory and the implementation of neural networks (for instance, transformers, CNNs) and/or search algorithms (for instance, branch & bound search, beam search)

strong programming skills, where experience in languages such as C++, Rust or Java is an asset

an ability to carry out independent research

proficiency in English, both spoken and written

Foundation models have emerged in the last 10 years for many domains: models for text (Large Language Models) and vision models are certainly the most popular at the moment. A more recent development is the emergence of foundational models for more specialized domains, such as Tabular Foundation Models. The core principle of these neural network models is that they are optimized for a specific form of data; in the case of tabular data, for instance, this is dat...