VLDB 2026 Research / reviewers in the wild / expert
Nicolas Zilberstein
dblp:304/2324
· DBLP profile ↗
7ranked-venue papers
4as first author
7since 2021 · last 2025
0000-0002-7830-9601ORCID · reported
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Graphics, computer vision, multimedia, augmented reality and games · 4 · 2 first-author · 4 since 2021Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 2 · 1 first-author · 2 since 2021Computer networks · 1 · 1 first-author · 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
1 paper |
Generative modeling · 75% Probabilistic and Bayesian machine learning · 25% |
Topics — the 4 heaviest of 4, each with the papers that count most for it
| Topic | Weight | Papers | Last | Evidence papers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Machine learning › Generative modeling
diffusion model |
0.9 | 1 | 2025 | Repulsive Latent Score Distillation for Solving Inverse Problems · ICLR 2025 |
Machine learning › Generative modeling › diffusion model
inverse problem solving |
0.9 | 1 | 2025 | Repulsive Latent Score Distillation for Solving Inverse Problems · ICLR 2025 |
Machine learning › Probabilistic and Bayesian machine learning › sampling
posterior sampling |
0.9 | 1 | 2025 | Repulsive Latent Score Distillation for Solving Inverse Problems · ICLR 2025 |
Machine learning › Generative modeling › diffusion model
score distillation sampling |
0.9 | 1 | 2025 | Repulsive Latent Score Distillation for Solving Inverse Problems · ICLR 2025 |
Methods — techniques the papers use, named apart from their topics
wasserstein gradient flow · 0.9variational inference · 0.9repulsion kernel · 0.9
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Scalable Implicit Graphon LearningabstractGraphons are continuous models that represent the structure of graphs and allow the generation of graphs of varying sizes. We propose Scalable Implicit Graphon Learning (SIGL), a scalable method that combines implicit neural representations (INRs) and graph neural networks (GNNs) to estimate a graphon from observed graphs. Unlike existing methods, which face important limitations like fixed resolution and scalability issues, SIGL learns a continuous graphon at arbitrary resolutions. GNNs are used to determine the correct node ordering, improving graph alignment. Furthermore, we characterize the asymptotic consistency of our estimator, showing that more expressive INRs and GNNs lead to consistent estimators. We evaluate SIGL in synthetic and real-world graphs, showing that it outperforms existing methods and scales effectively to larger graphs, making it ideal for tasks like graph data augmentation. Ali Azizpour, Nicolas Zilberstein, Santiago Segarra |
AISTATS | 2 |
| 2025 | Repulsive Latent Score Distillation for Solving Inverse ProblemsabstractScore Distillation Sampling (SDS) has been pivotal for leveraging pre-trained diffusion models in downstream tasks such as inverse problems, but it faces two major challenges: $(i)$ mode collapse and $(ii)$ latent space inversion, which become more pronounced in high-dimensional data.
To address mode collapse, we introduce a novel variational framework for posterior sampling.
Utilizing the Wasserstein gradient flow interpretation of SDS, we propose a multimodal variational approximation with a \emph{repulsion} mechanism that promotes diversity among particles by penalizing pairwise kernel-based similarity.
This repulsion acts as a simple regularizer, encouraging a more diverse set of solutions.
To mitigate latent space ambiguity, we extend this framework with an \emph{augmented} variational distribution that disentangles the latent and data.
This repulsive augmented formulation balances computational efficiency, quality, and diversity.
Extensive experiments on linear and nonlinear inverse tasks with high-resolution images ($512 \times 512$) using pre-trained Stable Diffusion models demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Nicolas Zilberstein, Morteza Mardani, Santiago Segarra |
ICLR | 1 |
| 2024 | End-to-End Learning of Gaussian Mixture Proposals Using Differentiable Particle Filters and Neural NetworksabstractWe introduce a new method, named PropMixNN, that uses a neural network to learn the proposal distribution of a particle filter. The optimal proposal distribution is approximated as a multivariate Gaussian mixture, so the proposed method aims at learning the means and covariance matrices of the S components that characterise the mixture. This unsupervised method is trained to target the log-likelihood, which does not require knowledge of the hidden state. The performance of the method is assessed in a stochastic Lorenz 96 model, which presents a non-linear chaotic behaviour. The proposed method reduces estimation errors in comparison with the state-of-the-art, showing greater improvement in highly non-linear scenarios. Benjamin Cox, Sara Pérez-Vieites, Nicolas Zilberstein, Martin Sevilla, Santiago Segarra, Victor Elvira |
ICASSP | 3 |
| 2024 | Joint Channel Estimation and Data Detection in Massive Mimo Systems Based on Diffusion ModelsabstractWe propose a joint channel estimation and data detection algorithm for massive multilple-input multiple-output systems based on diffusion models. Our proposed method solves the blind inverse problem by sampling from the joint posterior distribution of the symbols and channels and computing an approximate maximum a posteriori estimation. To achieve this, we construct a diffusion process that models the joint distribution of the channels and symbols given noisy observations, and then run the reverse process to generate the samples. A unique contribution of the algorithm is to include the discrete prior distribution of the symbols and a learned prior for the channels. Indeed, this is key as it allows a more efficient exploration of the joint search space and, therefore, enhances the sampling process. Through numerical experiments, we demonstrate that our method yields a lower normalized mean squared error than competing approaches and reduces the pilot overhead. Nicolas Zilberstein, Ananthram Swami, Santiago Segarra |
ICASSP | 1 |
| 2023 | Accelerated Massive MIMO Detector Based on Annealed Underdamped Langevin DynamicsabstractWe propose a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detector based on an annealed version of the underdamped Langevin (stochastic) dynamic. Our detector achieves state-of-the-art performance in terms of symbol error rate (SER) while keeping the computational complexity in check. Indeed, our method can be easily tuned to strike the right balance between computational complexity and performance as required by the application at hand. This balance is achieved by tuning hyperparameters that control the length of the simulated Langevin dynamic. Through numerical experiments, we demonstrate that our detector yields lower SER than competing approaches (including learning-based ones) with a lower running time compared to a previously proposed overdamped Langevin-based MIMO detector. Nicolas Zilberstein, Chris Dick, Rahman Doost-Mohammady, Ashutosh Sabharwal, Santiago Segarra |
ICASSP | 1 |
| 2023 | Annealed Langevin Dynamics for Massive MIMO DetectionabstractSolving the optimal symbol detection problem in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is known to be NP-hard. Hence, the objective of any detector of practical relevance is to get reasonably close to the optimal solution while keeping the computational complexity in check. In this work, we propose a MIMO detector based on an annealed version of Langevin (stochastic) dynamics. More precisely, we define a stochastic dynamical process whose stationary distribution coincides with the posterior distribution of the symbols given our observations. In essence, this allows us to approximate the maximum a posteriori estimator of the transmitted symbols by sampling from the proposed Langevin dynamic. Furthermore, we carefully craft this stochastic dynamic by gradually adding a sequence of noise with decreasing variance to the trajectories, which ensures that the estimated symbols belong to a pre-specified discrete constellation. Based on the proposed MIMO detector, we also design a robust version of the method by unfolding and parameterizing one term– the score of the likelihood– by a neural network. Through numerical experiments in both synthetic and real-world data, we show that our proposed detector yields state-of-the-art symbol error rate performance and the robust version becomes noise-variance agnostic. Nicolas Zilberstein, Chris Dick, Rahman Doost-Mohammady, Ashutosh Sabharwal, Santiago Segarra |
IEEE Trans. Wirel. Commun. | 1 |
| 2022 | Unrolling Particles: Unsupervised Learning of Sampling DistributionsabstractParticle filtering is used to compute nonlinear estimates of complex systems. It samples trajectories from a chosen distribution and computes the estimate as a weighted average of them. Easy-to-sample distributions often lead to degenerate samples where only one trajectory carries all the weight, negatively affecting the resulting performance of the estimate. While much research has been done on the design of appropriate sampling distributions that would lead to controlled degeneracy, in this paper our objective is to learn sampling distributions. Leveraging the framework of algorithm unrolling, we model the sampling distribution as a multivariate normal, and we use neural networks to learn both the mean and the covariance. We carry out unsupervised training of the model to minimize weight degeneracy, relying only on the observed measurements of the system. We show in simulations that the resulting particle filter yields good estimates in a wide range of scenarios. Fernando Gama, Nicolas Zilberstein, Richard G. Baraniuk, Santiago Segarra |
ICASSP | 2 |