VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Gary Bécigneul
dblp:198/1359
· DBLP profile ↗
10ranked-venue papers
1as first author
2since 2021 · last 2021
—ORCID · none
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 10 · 1 first-author · 2 since 2021Graphics, computer vision, multimedia, augmented reality and games · 1 · 1 since 2021
Expertise — from the expertise taxonomy: the topics of the expert's papers under the CCF categories. A weight counts papers with recency: 1 for a paper about the topic, 0.3 when the topic is its context, halved every five years.
| Artificial intelligence
7 papers |
Representation and self-supervised learning · 43% Graph learning · 27% Deep learning architectures and training · 12% | |
| Theoretical computer science
2 papers |
Mathematical optimization · 90% Computational geometry · 10% |
Topics — the 16 heaviest of 19, each with the papers that count most for it
| Topic | Weight | Papers | Last | Evidence papers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Machine learning › Representation and self-supervised learning › representation learning › dimensionality reduction › manifold learning › geometric representation learning
hyperbolic representation learning |
1.0 | 3 | 2019 | Poincare Glove: Hyperbolic Word Embeddings · ICLR (Poster) 2019 Hyperbolic Neural Networks · NeurIPS 2018 Hyperbolic Entailment Cones for Learning Hierarchical Embeddings · ICML 2018 |
Machine learning › Representation and self-supervised learning › representation learning › dimensionality reduction › manifold learning › geometric representation learning
non-euclidean representation learning |
0.6 | 2 | 2021 | Constant Curvature Graph Convolutional Networks · ICML 2020 Computationally Tractable Riemannian Manifolds for Graph Embeddings · AAAI 2021 |
Machine learning › Graph learning
network embedding |
0.5 | 1 | 2021 | Computationally Tractable Riemannian Manifolds for Graph Embeddings · AAAI 2021 |
Machine learning › Graph learning › graph neural network
graph convolutional network |
0.4 | 1 | 2020 | Constant Curvature Graph Convolutional Networks · ICML 2020 |
Machine learning › Graph learning
graph neural network |
0.4 | 1 | 2020 | Constant Curvature Graph Convolutional Networks · ICML 2020 |
Machine learning › Generative modeling
variational autoencoder |
0.4 | 1 | 2020 | Mixed-curvature Variational Autoencoders · ICLR 2020 |
Machine learning › Deep learning architectures and training
output layer |
0.4 | 1 | 2019 | Breaking the Softmax Bottleneck via Learnable Monotonic Pointwise Non-linearities · ICML 2019 |
Natural language and speech › Language models and text generation › language modeling
softmax bottleneck |
0.4 | 1 | 2019 | Breaking the Softmax Bottleneck via Learnable Monotonic Pointwise Non-linearities · ICML 2019 |
Machine learning › Representation and self-supervised learning › word representation
word embedding |
0.4 | 1 | 2019 | Poincare Glove: Hyperbolic Word Embeddings · ICLR (Poster) 2019 |
Machine learning › Representation and self-supervised learning
word representation |
0.4 | 1 | 2019 | Poincare Glove: Hyperbolic Word Embeddings · ICLR (Poster) 2019 |
Mathematical optimization › continuous optimization › convex optimization › first-order methods › gradient-based optimization
adaptive optimization |
0.4 | 1 | 2019 | Riemannian Adaptive Optimization Methods · ICLR (Poster) 2019 |
Mathematical optimization
continuous optimization |
0.4 | 1 | 2019 | Riemannian Adaptive Optimization Methods · ICLR (Poster) 2019 |
Mathematical optimization
riemannian optimization |
0.4 | 1 | 2019 | Riemannian Adaptive Optimization Methods · ICLR (Poster) 2019 |
Machine learning › Graph learning
graph representation learning |
0.3 | 1 | 2018 | Hyperbolic Entailment Cones for Learning Hierarchical Embeddings · ICML 2018 |
Machine learning › Representation and self-supervised learning › representation learning › embedding learning
hierarchical embedding |
0.3 | 1 | 2018 | Hyperbolic Entailment Cones for Learning Hierarchical Embeddings · ICML 2018 |
Computer vision › 3D vision › geometric deep learning
hyperbolic neural networks |
0.3 | 1 | 2018 | Hyperbolic Neural Networks · NeurIPS 2018 |
Methods — techniques the papers use, named apart from their topics
spherical geometry · 0.9hyperbolic geometry · 0.9gyro-barycentric coordinates · 0.9riemannian optimization · 0.5geodesic distance · 0.5variational autoencoder · 0.4riemannian geometry · 0.4poincare embedding · 0.4monotonic pointwise non-linearities · 0.4matrix factorization · 0.4adaptive gradient methods · 0.4entailment cone · 0.3
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Computationally Tractable Riemannian Manifolds for Graph EmbeddingsabstractRepresenting graphs as sets of node embeddings in certain curved Riemannian manifolds has recently gained momentum in machine learning due to their desirable geometric inductive biases (e.g., hierarchical structures benefit from hyperbolic geometry). However, going beyond embedding spaces of constant sectional curvature, while potentially more representationally powerful, proves to be challenging as one can easily lose the appeal of computationally tractable tools such as geodesic distances or Riemannian gradients. Here, we explore two computationally efficient matrix manifolds, showcasing how to learn and optimize graph embeddings in these Riemannian spaces. Empirically, we demonstrate consistent improvements over Euclidean geometry while often outperforming hyperbolic and elliptical embeddings based on various metrics that capture different graph properties. Our results serve as new evidence for the benefits of non-Euclidean embeddings in machine learning pipelines. Calin Cruceru, Gary Bécigneul, Octavian-Eugen Ganea |
AAAI | 2 |
| 2021 | Momentum Improves Optimization on Riemannian ManifoldsabstractWe develop a new Riemannian descent algorithm that relies on momentum to improve over existing first-order methods for geodesically convex optimization. In contrast, accelerated convergence rates proved in prior work have only been shown to hold for geodesically strongly-convex objective functions. We further extend our algorithm to geodesically weakly-quasi-convex objectives. Our proofs of convergence rely on a novel estimate sequence that illustrates the dependency of the convergence rate on the curvature of the manifold. We validate our theoretical results empirically on several optimization problems defined on the sphere and on the manifold of positive definite matrices. Foivos Alimisis, Antonio Orvieto, Gary Bécigneul, Aurélien Lucchi |
AISTATS | 3 |
| 2020 | A Continuous-time Perspective for Modeling Acceleration in Riemannian OptimizationabstractWe propose a novel second-order ODE as the continuous-time limit of a Riemannian accelerated gradient-based method on a manifold with curvature bounded from below. This ODE can be seen as a generalization of the ODE derived for Euclidean spaces, and can also serve as an analysis tool. We analyze the convergence behavior of this ODE for different types of functions, such as geodesically convex, strongly-convex and weakly-quasi-convex. We demonstrate how such an ODE can be discretized using a semi-implicit and Nesterov-inspired numerical integrator, that empirically yields stable algorithms which are faithful to the continuous-time analysis and exhibit accelerated convergence. Foivos Alimisis, Antonio Orvieto, Gary Bécigneul, Aurélien Lucchi |
AISTATS | 3 |
| 2020 | Mixed-curvature Variational Autoencoders
Ondrej Skopek, Octavian-Eugen Ganea, Gary Bécigneul |
ICLR | 3 |
| 2020 | Constant Curvature Graph Convolutional NetworksabstractInterest has been rising lately towards methods representing data in non-Euclidean spaces, e.g. hyperbolic or spherical that provide specific inductive biases useful for certain real-world data properties, e.g. scale-free, hierarchical or cyclical. However, the popular graph neural networks are currently limited in modeling data only via Euclidean geometry and associated vector space operations. Here, we bridge this gap by proposing mathematically grounded generalizations of graph convolutional networks (GCN) to (products of) constant curvature spaces. We do this by i) introducing a unified formalism permitting a differentiable interpolation between all geometries of constant curvature irrespective of their sign, ii) leveraging gyro-barycentric coordinates that generalize the classic Euclidean concept of the center of mass. Our class of models smoothly recover their Euclidean counterparts when the curvature goes to zero from either side. Empirically, we outperform Euclidean GCNs in the tasks of node classification and distortion minimization for symbolic data exhibiting non-Euclidean behavior, according to their discrete curvature. Gregor Bachmann, Gary Bécigneul, Octavian-Eugen Ganea |
ICML | 2 |
| 2019 | Riemannian Adaptive Optimization Methods
Gary Bécigneul, Octavian-Eugen Ganea |
ICLR (Poster) | 1 |
| 2019 | Poincare Glove: Hyperbolic Word Embeddings
Alexandru Tifrea, Gary Bécigneul, Octavian-Eugen Ganea |
ICLR (Poster) | 2 |
| 2019 | Breaking the Softmax Bottleneck via Learnable Monotonic Pointwise Non-linearitiesabstractThe Softmax function on top of a final linear layer is the de facto method to output probability distributions in neural networks. In many applications such as language models or text generation, this model has to produce distributions over large output vocabularies. Recently, this has been shown to have limited representational capacity due to its connection with the rank bottleneck in matrix factorization. However, little is known about the limitations of Linear-Softmax for quantities of practical interest such as cross entropy or mode estimation, a direction that we explore here. As an efficient and effective solution to alleviate this issue, we propose to learn parametric monotonic functions on top of the logits. We theoretically investigate the rank increasing capabilities of such monotonic functions. Empirically, our method improves in two different quality metrics over the traditional Linear-Softmax layer in synthetic and real language model experiments, adding little time or memory overhead, while being comparable to the more computationally expensive mixture of Softmaxes. Octavian-Eugen Ganea, Sylvain Gelly, Gary Bécigneul, Aliaksei Severyn |
ICML | 3 |
| 2018 | Hyperbolic Entailment Cones for Learning Hierarchical EmbeddingsabstractLearning graph representations via low-dimensional embeddings that preserve relevant network properties is an important class of problems in machine learning. We here present a novel method to embed directed acyclic graphs. Following prior work, we first advocate for using hyperbolic spaces which provably model tree-like structures better than Euclidean geometry. Second, we view hierarchical relations as partial orders defined using a family of nested geodesically convex cones. We prove that these entailment cones admit an optimal shape with a closed form expression both in the Euclidean and hyperbolic spaces, and they canonically define the embedding learning process. Experiments show significant improvements of our method over strong recent baselines both in terms of representational capacity and generalization. Octavian-Eugen Ganea, Gary Bécigneul, Thomas Hofmann 0001 |
ICML | 2 |
| 2018 | Hyperbolic Neural NetworksabstractHyperbolic spaces have recently gained momentum in the context of machine learning due to their high capacity and tree-likeliness properties. However, the representational power of hyperbolic geometry is not yet on par with Euclidean geometry, firstly because of the absence of corresponding hyperbolic neural network layers. Here, we bridge this gap in a principled manner by combining the formalism of Möbius gyrovector spaces with the Riemannian geometry of the Poincaré model of hyperbolic spaces. As a result, we derive hyperbolic versions of important deep learning tools: multinomial logistic regression, feed-forward and recurrent neural networks. This allows to embed sequential data and perform classification in the hyperbolic space. Empirically, we show that, even if hyperbolic optimization tools are limited, hyperbolic sentence embeddings either outperform or are on par with their Euclidean variants on textual entailment and noisy-prefix recognition tasks. Octavian-Eugen Ganea, Gary Bécigneul, Thomas Hofmann 0001 |
NeurIPS | 2 |