VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Giangiacomo Mercatali
dblp:302/0449
· DBLP profile ↗
4ranked-venue papers
3as first author
4since 2021 · last 2025
—ORCID · none
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 4 · 3 first-author · 4 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
3 papers |
Graph learning · 35% Generative modeling · 32% Probabilistic and Bayesian machine learning · 12% |
Topics — the 9 heaviest of 10, each with the papers that count most for it
| Topic | Weight | Papers | Last | Evidence papers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Machine learning › Graph learning › graph generation
conditional graph generation |
0.8 | 1 | 2024 | Diffusion Twigs with Loop Guidance for Conditional Graph Generation · NeurIPS 2024 |
Machine learning › Probabilistic and Bayesian machine learning
continuous-time model |
0.8 | 1 | 2024 | Graph Neural Flows for Unveiling Systemic Interactions Among Irregularly Sampled Time Series · NeurIPS 2024 |
Machine learning › Generative modeling
diffusion model |
0.8 | 1 | 2024 | Diffusion Twigs with Loop Guidance for Conditional Graph Generation · NeurIPS 2024 |
Machine learning › Graph learning
graph generation |
0.8 | 1 | 2024 | Diffusion Twigs with Loop Guidance for Conditional Graph Generation · NeurIPS 2024 |
Machine learning › Graph learning
graph neural network |
0.8 | 1 | 2024 | Graph Neural Flows for Unveiling Systemic Interactions Among Irregularly Sampled Time Series · NeurIPS 2024 |
Machine learning › Generative modeling › molecular generation
molecular graph generation |
0.8 | 1 | 2024 | Diffusion Twigs with Loop Guidance for Conditional Graph Generation · NeurIPS 2024 |
Machine learning › Deep learning architectures and training › neural differential equations
neural ordinary differential equations |
0.8 | 1 | 2024 | Graph Neural Flows for Unveiling Systemic Interactions Among Irregularly Sampled Time Series · NeurIPS 2024 |
Machine learning › Representation and self-supervised learning › representation learning
disentangled representation learning |
0.6 | 1 | 2022 | Symmetry-induced Disentanglement on Graphs · NeurIPS 2022 |
Machine learning › Generative modeling
variational autoencoder |
0.6 | 1 | 2022 | Symmetry-induced Disentanglement on Graphs · NeurIPS 2022 |
Methods — techniques the papers use, named apart from their topics
score-based diffusion · 0.8ordinary differential equation · 0.8loop guidance · 0.8inverse molecular design · 0.8directed acyclic graph · 0.8causal dependency modeling · 0.8variational autoencoder · 0.6lie algebra · 0.6conditional symmetry · 0.6
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | MING: A Functional Approach to Learning Molecular Generative ModelsabstractTraditional molecule generation methods often rely on sequence- or graph-based representations, which can limit their expressive power or require complex permutation-equivariant architectures. This paper introduces a novel paradigm for learning molecule generative models based on functional representations. Specifically, we propose Molecular Implicit Neural Generation (MING), a diffusion-based model that learns molecular distributions in the function space. Unlike standard diffusion processes in the data space, MING employs a novel functional denoising probabilistic process, which jointly denoises information in both the function’s input and output spaces by leveraging an expectation-maximization procedure for latent implicit neural representations of data. This approach enables a simple yet effective model design that accurately captures underlying function distributions. Experimental results on molecule-related datasets demonstrate MING’s superior performance and ability to generate plausible molecular samples, surpassing state-of-the-art data-space methods while offering a more streamlined architecture and significantly faster generation times. The code is available at \url{https://github.com/v18nguye/MING.} Van Khoa Nguyen, Maciej Falkiewicz, Giangiacomo Mercatali, Alexandros Kalousis |
AISTATS | 3 |
| 2024 | Graph Neural Flows for Unveiling Systemic Interactions Among Irregularly Sampled Time SeriesabstractInteracting systems are prevalent in nature. It is challenging to accurately predict the dynamics of the system if its constituent components are analyzed independently. We develop a graph-based model that unveils the systemic interactions of time series observed at irregular time points, by using a directed acyclic graph to model the conditional dependencies (a form of causal notation) of the system components and learning this graph in tandem with a continuous-time model that parameterizes the solution curves of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Our technique, a graph neural flow, leads to substantial enhancements over non-graph-based methods, as well as graph-based methods without the modeling of conditional dependencies. We validate our approach on several tasks, including time series classification and forecasting, to demonstrate its efficacy. Giangiacomo Mercatali, André Freitas |
NeurIPS | 1 |
| 2024 | Diffusion Twigs with Loop Guidance for Conditional Graph GenerationabstractWe introduce a novel score-based diffusion framework named Twigs that incorporates multiple co-evolving flows for enriching conditional generation tasks. Specifically, a central or trunk diffusion process is associated with a primary variable (e.g., graph structure), and additional offshoot or stem processes are dedicated to dependent variables (e.g., graph properties or labels). A new strategy, which we call loop guidance, effectively orchestrates the flow of information between the trunk and the stem processes during sampling. This approach allows us to uncover intricate interactions and dependencies, and unlock new generative capabilities. We provide extensive experiments to demonstrate strong performance gains of the proposed method over contemporary baselines in the context of conditional graph generation, underscoring the potential of Twigs in challenging generative tasks such as inverse molecular design and molecular optimization.
Code is available at https://github.com/Aalto-QuML/Diffusion_twigs. Giangiacomo Mercatali, Yogesh Verma, André Freitas, Vikas Garg 0001 |
NeurIPS | 1 |
| 2022 | Symmetry-induced Disentanglement on GraphsabstractLearning disentangled representations is important for unraveling the underlying complex interactions between latent generative factors. Disentanglement has been formalized using a symmetry-centric notion for unstructured spaces, however, graphs have eluded a similarly rigorous treatment. We fill this gap with a new notion of conditional symmetry for disentanglement, and leverage tools from Lie algebras to encode graph properties into subgroups using suitable adaptations of generative models such as Variational Autoencoders. Unlike existing works on disentanglement, the proposed models segregate the latent space into uncoupled and entangled parts. Experiments on synthetic and real datasets suggest that these models can learn effective disengaged representations, and improve performance on downstream tasks such as few-shot classification and molecular generation. Giangiacomo Mercatali, André Freitas, Vikas Garg 0001 |
NeurIPS | 1 |