Learning to Discover

First segment was held from the 15th to the 26th of July 2019: The First Real Time Analysis Workshop

The second instalment is from the 14th to the 25th of October 2019

The third instalment is planned for 2022

 

Since 2014, the field of AI and HEP has grown exponentially. Physicists have realised quickly the potential of AI to deal with the large amount of complex data they are collecting and analysing. Many AI techniques have been put forward, with scientific collaboration based on open data sets, challenges, workshops and papers.

Learning To Discover is a first-of-its-kind workshop where participants will have access to deep technical insights in advanced machine learning techniques, and their application to particle physics. During the event, blending the concept of hackathon, hands-on and tutorials, physicists who have attempted to apply machine learning to specific challenges in HEP will expose their problem case and the solutions they have arrived at so far. ML experts will expose the latest advances in relevant techniques. Machine learning experts and ml-aware physicists will work hand in hand on existing datasets, building upon and improving existing solutions. Under this particular environment, the participants will be able to discuss and understand shortcomings of existing solutions and develop novel architectures and methods to outperform on the specific problem. For example, despite promising applications of Graph Neural Network (GNN) to several HEP problems (tracking, identification, calorimeter reconstruction, particle flow, …) there remains several bottlenecks in the models being used. In particular the following topics are of interest: ways to extract graph-level information, mechanisms for information propagation over the graph, accurate graph generation,  evolution of graph topology within the model, ...

Physicists with concrete experience with Machine Learning (postdocs, advanced PhD students, ...) and Computer Scientists seasoned with the development of cutting edge ML models (expected participation from Google Deepmind, NVidia, IDIAP, ...) are invited to apply for attendance. Application is however opened to everyone with experience and interest. The selection process will be as inclusive as possible, and only done so as to make the workshop fruitful for everyone and given the constraints of the premises.  The final conference on AI and HEP is open to physicists and Computer Scientists until the maximum attendance is reached.

Three themes have tentatively been selected based on the one hand, their interest for HEP, and the fact there is already a number of HEP teams working on it, on the other hand, their importance in the Machine Learning field. The candidate themes to be tackled sequentially are : Graph Neural Networks, Generative Models, and multi dimensional Probability Density Estimation.

 

Organising Committee

  • Cécile Germain : Emeritus professor (computer science) Université Paris-Saclay, LRI-CNRS, and INRIA TAU team, organiser of the 2014 HiggsML and 2018-2019 TrackML challenge
  • Vladimir Vava Gligorov, CNRS/IN2P3 LPNHE,  leader of the LHCb Real Time analysis project, organiser of the Real Time Analysis Institut Pascal Workshop
  • Eilam Gross, Weizmann Institute, organiser of the Hammers and Nails 2017 and 2019 workshop
  • Michael Kagan, SLAC, former co-coordinator of ATLAS Machine Learning group
  • Danilo Rezende, Researcher on Probabilistic Methods for Decision Making, Senior Staff Researcher and Team Lead at Google Deepmind
  • David Rousseau, CNRS/IN2P3 IJCLab : former co-coordinator of ATLAS Machine Learning group, current co-coordinator of the LHC Interexperiment Machine Learning Group, organiser of the 2014 Higgs Machine Learning challenge, and of the 2018-2019 TrackML challenge
  • Andreas Salzburger, CERN, coordinator of the ATLAS software upgrade group, organiser of the 2018-2019 TrackML challenge and organiser of the Advanced Pattern Recognition Institut Pascal Workshop
  • Jean-Roch Vlimant,  Caltech, co-coordinator of CMS Machine Learning group, organiser of the 2018-2019 TrackML challenge
  • Slava Voloshynovskiy, head of Stochastic Information Processing group,  Université de Genève