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Selected Roles


2023-

Postdoctoral Research Fellow,
Mila AI Institute,
Montreal, Canada


2021-23

Postdoctoral Research Fellow,
Harvard University,
Boston, United States


2021

AI Research Scientist (visiting),
Naver Labs,
Seoul, South Korea


2020-21

Postdoctoral Research Associate,
University of Cambridge,
Cambridge, UK

Education

2017-20

PhD in Artificial Intelligence
and Robotics,

University of Cambridge,
Cambridge, UK

2013-17

BEng in Artificial Intelligence
and Software Engineering,

University of Edinburgh,
Edinburgh, UK

Biography

I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Yoshua Bengio's group, at the Mila AI Institute. My current work focuses on generative AI and probabilistic inference as well as AI applications to drug discovery and robotics. I am also interested in the topics of learning representations, bias, and generalization in deep models.

I received my BEng in Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering in 2017 from the University of Edinburgh, where I graduated summa cum laude, obtaining the Class Award and Howe Prize for the best performance in Artificial Intelligence.

I pursued my Ph.D. and Postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge's Biologically Inspired Robotics Laboratory (BIRL) under the supervision of Prof. Fumiya Iida, where I worked on the application of machine learning for sensory perception and action in robotics systems.

In 2021 I joined Never Corp. as a visiting AI Research Scientist, focusing on the topics of learning representations, robustness, and generalization in deep learning.

Finally, I am a former Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University and Dana Farber, where I worked closely with Dr. Ming-Ru Wu to boost computational biomedical research and to use machine learning to answer basic questions in tumor biology and immunotherapy, with the ultimate goal of improving cancer treatment quality and efficiency.

Research Interests

I am interested in the interplay of foundation AI research and its applications to critical domains. I am particularly interested in the topics of generative AI, probabilistic inference, multi-modal perception, and learning representations as well as the downstream implications of these research domains in fairness, explicability, and (safe) inference. I am also very enthusiastic about the impact of machine learning in the sciences and engineering. I am fortunate to be involved in several of these domains including Vision, Computational Biology (deep RL, bio-sequence design), Robotics (Visual and Tactile action/perception, multi-modal time series), and even Astrophysics (lensing/inverse problems).

 

For collaborations please contact me at luca.scimeca@mila.quebec.

Highlights

Unlocking the Power of Diffusion Models: A Dive into Relative Trajectory Balance In …

Shortcut Learning in Deep Neural Networks. Which cues will your model choose to …

Robotics Palpation

Robotics Palpation (University of Cambridge, 2019) This paper proposes a framework to investigate …

Bayesian Exploration for Morphology-Action Co-optimization (University of Cambridge, 2019) Morphology been shown to …

Dynamic Robot Control for Expressive Piano Playing (University of Cambridge, 2019) Piano is …

Coding with Neural Networks (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019) The project was developed …