Publications

Machine-learning-assisted preoperative prediction of pediatric appendicitis severity
Aylin Erman
Julia Ferreira
Waseem Abu Ashour
Elena Guadagno
Etienne St-Louis
Sherif Emil
Jackie Cheung
Dan Poenaru
2025-01-01
Journal of Pediatric Surgery (publié)
doi.org
MLOps, LLMOps, FMOps, and Beyond
Chakkrit Tantithamthavorn
Fabio Palomba
Foutse Khomh
Joselito Joey Chua
2025-01-01
IEEE Software (publié)
doi.org
MLOps, LLMOps, FMOps, and Beyond
Chakkrit Tantithamthavorn
Fabio Palomba
Foutse Khomh
Joselito Joey Chua
2025-01-01
IEEE Software (publié)
doi.org
A Multi-Robot Exploration Planner for Space Applications
Vivek Shankar Vardharajan
Giovanni Beltrame
2025-01-01
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (publié)
doi.org
Ex Post Conditions for the Exactness of Optimal Power Flow Conic Relaxations
Jean-Luc Lupien
Antoine Lesage-Landry
Convex relaxations of the optimal power flow (OPF) problem provide an efficient alternative to solving the intractable alternating current (… (voir plus)AC) optimal power flow. The conic subset of OPF convex relaxations, in particular, greatly accelerate resolution while leading to high-quality approximations that are exact in several scenarios. However, the sufficient conditions guaranteeing exactness are stringent, e.g., requiring radial topologies. In this short communication, we present two equivalent ex post conditions for the exactness of any conic relaxation of the OPF. These rely on obtaining either a rank-1 voltage matrix or self-coherent cycles. Instead of relying on sufficient conditions a priori, satisfying one of the presented ex post conditions acts as an exactness certificate for the computed solution. The operator can therefore obtain an optimality guarantee when solving a conic relaxation even when a priori exactness requirements are not met. Finally, we present numerical examples from the MATPOWER library where the ex post conditions hold even though the exactness sufficient conditions do not, thereby illustrating the use of the conditions.
2025-01-01
Electric Power Systems Research (publié)
doi.org
arxiv.org
A stochastic integer programming approach to reserve staff scheduling with preferences
Carl Perreault‐Lafleur
Margarida Carvalho
Guy Desaulniers
2025-01-01
Int. Trans. Oper. Res. (publié)
doi.org
arxiv.org
Towards Enhancing the Reproducibility of Deep Learning Bugs: An Empirical Study
Mehil B. Shah
Mohammad Masudur Rahman
Foutse Khomh
2025-01-01
Empir. Softw. Eng. (publié)
doi.org
arxiv.org
AfriHG: News headline generation for African Languages
Toyib Ogunremi
Serah Akojenu
Anthony Soronnadi
Olubayo Adekanmbi
David Ifeoluwa Adelani
This paper introduces AfriHG -- a news headline generation dataset created by combining from XLSum and MasakhaNEWS datasets focusing on 16 l… (voir plus)anguages widely spoken by Africa. We experimented with two seq2eq models (mT5-base and AfriTeVa V2), and Aya-101 LLM. Our results show that Africa-centric seq2seq models such as AfriTeVa V2 outperform the massively multilingual mT5-base model. Finally, we show that the performance of fine-tuning AfriTeVa V2 with 313M parameters is competitive to prompting Aya-101 LLM with more than 13B parameters.
2024-12-28
ArXiv (prépublication)
arxiv.org
arxiv.org
Divergent Perception: Framing Creative Cognition Through the Lens of Sensory Flexibility
Antoine Bellemare‐Pepin
Karim Jerbi
Creativity is a cornerstone of human evolution and is typically defined as the multifaceted ability to produce novel and useful artifacts. A… (voir plus)lthough much research has focused on divergent thinking, growing evidence underscores the importance of perceptual processing in fostering creativity, particularly through perceptual flexibility. The present work aims to offer a framework that relates creativity to perception, showing how sensory affordances, especially in ambiguous stimuli, can contribute to the generation of novel ideas. In doing so, we contextualize the phenomenon of pareidolia, which involves seeing familiar patterns in noisy or ambiguous stimuli, as a key perceptual mechanism of idea generation—one of the central stages of the creative process. We introduce “divergent perception” to describe the process by which individuals actively engage with the perceptual affordances provided by ambiguous sensory information, and illustrate how this concept could account for the heightened creativity observed in psychedelic and psychotic states. Moreover, we explore how divergent perception relates to cognitive mechanisms crucial in creative thinking, particularly focusing on the role of attention. Finally, we discuss future paths for the exploration of divergent perception, including targeted manipulation of stimulus characteristics and the investigation of the intricate interplay between bottom‐up and top‐down cognitive processes.
2024-12-24
The Journal of creative behavior (publié)
doi.org
Path-of-Thoughts: Extracting and Following Paths for Robust Relational Reasoning with Large Language Models
Ge Zhang
Mohammad Alomrani
Hongjian Gu
Jiaming Zhou
Yaochen Hu
Bin Wang
Qun Liu
Mark Coates
Yingxue Zhang
Jianye Hao
Large language models (LLMs) possess vast semantic knowledge but often struggle with complex reasoning tasks, particularly in relational rea… (voir plus)soning problems such as kinship or spatial reasoning. In this paper, we present Path-of-Thoughts (PoT), a novel framework designed to tackle relation reasoning by decomposing the task into three key stages: graph extraction, path identification, and reasoning. Unlike previous approaches, PoT efficiently extracts a task-agnostic graph that identifies crucial entities, relations, and attributes within the problem context. Subsequently, PoT identifies relevant reasoning chains within the graph corresponding to the posed question, facilitating inference of potential answers. Experimental evaluations on four benchmark datasets, demanding long reasoning chains, demonstrate that PoT surpasses state-of-the-art baselines by a significant margin (maximum 21.3%) without necessitating fine-tuning or extensive LLM calls. Furthermore, as opposed to prior neuro-symbolic methods, PoT exhibits improved resilience against LLM errors by leveraging the compositional nature of graphs.
2024-12-23
ArXiv (prépublication)
arxiv.org
arxiv.org
Fairness in Reinforcement Learning with Bisimulation Metrics
Sahand Rezaei-Shoshtari
Hanna Yurchyk
Scott Fujimoto
Doina Precup
David Meger
Ensuring long-term fairness is crucial when developing automated decision making systems, specifically in dynamic and sequential environment… (voir plus)s. By maximizing their reward without consideration of fairness, AI agents can introduce disparities in their treatment of groups or individuals. In this paper, we establish the connection between bisimulation metrics and group fairness in reinforcement learning. We propose a novel approach that leverages bisimulation metrics to learn reward functions and observation dynamics, ensuring that learners treat groups fairly while reflecting the original problem. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method in addressing disparities in sequential decision making problems through empirical evaluation on a standard fairness benchmark consisting of lending and college admission scenarios.
2024-12-22
ArXiv (prépublication)
arxiv.org
arxiv.org
DTPSP: A Deep Learning Framework for Optimized Time Point Selection in Time-Series Single-Cell Studies
Michel Hijazin
Pumeng Shi
Jingtao Wang
Jun Ding
Time-series studies are critical for uncovering dynamic biological processes, but achieving comprehensive profiling and resolution across mu… (voir plus)ltiple time points and modalities (multi-omics) remains challenging due to cost and scalability constraints. Current methods for studying temporal dynamics, whether at the bulk or single-cell level, often require extensive sampling, making it impractical to deeply profile all time points and modalities. To overcome these limitations, we present DTPSP, a deep learning framework designed to identify the most informative time points in any time-series study, enabling resource-efficient and targeted analyses. DTPSP models temporal gene expression patterns using readily obtainable data, such as bulk RNA-seq, to select time points that capture key system dynamics. It also integrates a deep generative module to infer data for non-sampled time points based on the selected time points, reconstructing the full temporal trajectory. This dual capability enables DTPSP to prioritize key time points for in-depth profiling, such as single-cell sequencing or multi-omics analyses, while filling gaps in the temporal landscape with high fidelity. We apply DTPSP to developmental and disease-associated time courses, demonstrating its ability to optimize experimental designs across bulk and single-cell studies. By reducing costs, enabling strategic multi-omics profiling, and enhancing biological insights, DTPSP provides a scalable and generalized solution for investigating dynamic systems.
2024-12-20
bioRxiv (prépublication)
doi.org