Mengye Ren
@mengyer.bsky.social
Assistant Professor of CS & DS at NYU. Machine Learning, Human-like AI, Continual Learning | Head of @agentic-ai-lab.bsky.social
mengyeren.com
mengyeren.com
Reposted by Mengye Ren
I have updated my tutorial on making Vision Language Action models. This tutorial starts with a basic Transformer and walks people through the steps to transform it into a full VLA that uses PaliGemma as the pretrained VLM. Links below.
February 9, 2026 at 2:15 PM
I have updated my tutorial on making Vision Language Action models. This tutorial starts with a basic Transformer and walks people through the steps to transform it into a full VLA that uses PaliGemma as the pretrained VLM. Links below.
Corporate PRs are becoming a disservice to science. We see amazing things with no idea how they were done. It's just a way to grab smart people and pump equity, while discouraging junior students by making them think there's nothing left to be done in research.
February 6, 2026 at 5:25 PM
Corporate PRs are becoming a disservice to science. We see amazing things with no idea how they were done. It's just a way to grab smart people and pump equity, while discouraging junior students by making them think there's nothing left to be done in research.
Check out our Midway Network paper on learning hierarchical latent motion tokens from watching videos. Recently got accepted to ICLR 2026!
Animals learn to recognize objects and how they move from observation. SSL on videos emulates “learning by observing” but only for recognition or motion, not both!
Our #ICLR2026 work Midway Network is the first to learn both recognition and motion understanding from videos via latent dynamics 🧵
Our #ICLR2026 work Midway Network is the first to learn both recognition and motion understanding from videos via latent dynamics 🧵
January 30, 2026 at 8:09 PM
Check out our Midway Network paper on learning hierarchical latent motion tokens from watching videos. Recently got accepted to ICLR 2026!
Verifiers are increasingly being used today in RL to provide rewards. We did a systematic study on when it is the best to use LLMs to verify solutions.
Do stronger LLMs make better verifiers? Not necessarily when grading themselves.
New work led by Courant PhD student @jacklu-me.bsky.social and CDS Asst Prof @mengyer.bsky.social shows that cross-family verification outperforms self-verification.
nyudatascience.medium.com/study-reveal...
New work led by Courant PhD student @jacklu-me.bsky.social and CDS Asst Prof @mengyer.bsky.social shows that cross-family verification outperforms self-verification.
nyudatascience.medium.com/study-reveal...
Study Reveals AI Models Are Biased Toward Solutions That Resemble Their Own Reasoning
Having AI models check the work of models from different “families” is far more effective than having them verify their own outputs.
nyudatascience.medium.com
January 30, 2026 at 6:28 PM
Verifiers are increasingly being used today in RL to provide rewards. We did a systematic study on when it is the best to use LLMs to verify solutions.
Our latest research Midway Networks learn recognition and motion representations from scratch by letting the network learn from watching videos. The latent motion vectors are refined in a top-down hierarchy. Interesting tracking results using our forward perturbation viz.
December 19, 2025 at 9:07 PM
Our latest research Midway Networks learn recognition and motion representations from scratch by letting the network learn from watching videos. The latent motion vectors are refined in a top-down hierarchy. Interesting tracking results using our forward perturbation viz.
We are so comfortable with the concept of pretraining in foundation models today that we assume an AI is supposed to have seen everything humanity has created. 1/2
December 16, 2025 at 10:09 PM
We are so comfortable with the concept of pretraining in foundation models today that we assume an AI is supposed to have seen everything humanity has created. 1/2
Excited to share our new research on local RL without backprop!
CDS Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Data Science @mengyer.bsky.social and co-author Frank Wu introduce ARQ, a new learning algorithm that skips backpropagation in favor of a more biologically plausible and computationally efficient method.
nyudatascience.medium.com/ditching-bac...
nyudatascience.medium.com/ditching-bac...
Ditching Backpropagation: A New Method Mimics How Brains Learn to Make Decisions
Mengye Ren and Frank Wu introduce a biologically-inspired learning algo that outperforms traditional methods without using backpropagation.
nyudatascience.medium.com
December 12, 2025 at 12:45 AM
Excited to share our new research on local RL without backprop!
Reposted by Mengye Ren
Lab gathering at #NeurIPS2025. Proud of this year’s work and excited about the ideas we’re building toward next!
December 10, 2025 at 12:27 AM
Lab gathering at #NeurIPS2025. Proud of this year’s work and excited about the ideas we’re building toward next!
I will be at NeurIPS next week. Let's connect if you are also interested in continual learning AI!
November 26, 2025 at 7:57 PM
I will be at NeurIPS next week. Let's connect if you are also interested in continual learning AI!
Midway networks are cool: representation learning of motion and reconstruction jointly. I see similar motivation in V-JEPA 2 "AC", but I really like the execution here:
- hierarchical,
- backwards features with cross-attention.
arxiv.org/abs/2510.05558
C. Hoang, @mengyer.bsky.social
NYU
- hierarchical,
- backwards features with cross-attention.
arxiv.org/abs/2510.05558
C. Hoang, @mengyer.bsky.social
NYU
November 15, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Reposted by Mengye Ren
Be part of #NeurIPS2025 in Mexico City! Submit your proposals:
📅 Deadlines
Tutorials: Sept 26 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Workshops: Sept 30 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Socials: Oct 1 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Startup Pitch: Oct 15 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
📅 Deadlines
Tutorials: Sept 26 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Workshops: Sept 30 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Socials: Oct 1 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Startup Pitch: Oct 15 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
September 19, 2025 at 2:30 PM
Be part of #NeurIPS2025 in Mexico City! Submit your proposals:
📅 Deadlines
Tutorials: Sept 26 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Workshops: Sept 30 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Socials: Oct 1 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Startup Pitch: Oct 15 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
📅 Deadlines
Tutorials: Sept 26 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Workshops: Sept 30 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Socials: Oct 1 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Startup Pitch: Oct 15 👉 neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Reposted by Mengye Ren
Pitch your AI startup at NeurIPS 2025 in Mexico City! The application deadline is just a month away on October 15th.
Learn more and apply now: neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Learn more and apply now: neurips.cc/Conferences/...
NeurIPS 2025 Mexico City - Call for Startup Pitch
We’re thrilled to announce the Startup Pitch Competition at the Mexico City satellite location of NeurIPS 2025! This competition offers early-stage AI startups a chance to showcase their innovations…
neurips.cc
September 15, 2025 at 4:03 PM
Pitch your AI startup at NeurIPS 2025 in Mexico City! The application deadline is just a month away on October 15th.
Learn more and apply now: neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Learn more and apply now: neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Reposted by Mengye Ren
Watch this new video of work by CDS Asst. Prof. Mengye Ren (@mengyer.bsky.social) and colleagues, who built PooDLe, an algorithm that helps AI systems learn from complex environments like busy streets.
The method mimics how humans process cluttered scenes.
www.nyu.edu/about/news-p...
The method mimics how humans process cluttered scenes.
www.nyu.edu/about/news-p...
September 10, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Watch this new video of work by CDS Asst. Prof. Mengye Ren (@mengyer.bsky.social) and colleagues, who built PooDLe, an algorithm that helps AI systems learn from complex environments like busy streets.
The method mimics how humans process cluttered scenes.
www.nyu.edu/about/news-p...
The method mimics how humans process cluttered scenes.
www.nyu.edu/about/news-p...
Reposted by Mengye Ren
We're excited to announce a second physical location for NeurIPS 2025, in Mexico City, which we hope will address concerns around skyrocketing attendance and difficulties in travel visas that some attendees have experienced in previous years.
Read more in our blog:
blog.neurips.cc/2025/07/16/n...
Read more in our blog:
blog.neurips.cc/2025/07/16/n...
July 16, 2025 at 10:05 PM
We're excited to announce a second physical location for NeurIPS 2025, in Mexico City, which we hope will address concerns around skyrocketing attendance and difficulties in travel visas that some attendees have experienced in previous years.
Read more in our blog:
blog.neurips.cc/2025/07/16/n...
Read more in our blog:
blog.neurips.cc/2025/07/16/n...
Reposted by Mengye Ren
NeurIPS is endorsing EurIPS, an independently-organized meeting which will offer researchers an opportunity to additionally present NeurIPS work in Europe concurrently with NeurIPS.
Read more in our blog post and on the EurIPS website:
blog.neurips.cc/2025/07/16/n...
eurips.cc
Read more in our blog post and on the EurIPS website:
blog.neurips.cc/2025/07/16/n...
eurips.cc
eurips.cc
A NeurIPS-endorsed conference in Europe held in Copenhagen, Denmark
eurips.cc
July 16, 2025 at 10:05 PM
NeurIPS is endorsing EurIPS, an independently-organized meeting which will offer researchers an opportunity to additionally present NeurIPS work in Europe concurrently with NeurIPS.
Read more in our blog post and on the EurIPS website:
blog.neurips.cc/2025/07/16/n...
eurips.cc
Read more in our blog post and on the EurIPS website:
blog.neurips.cc/2025/07/16/n...
eurips.cc
Reposted by Mengye Ren
NeurIPS is seeking additional ethics reviewers this year. If you are able and willing to participate in the review process, please sign up at the form in the link:
neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Please share this call with your colleagues!
neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Please share this call with your colleagues!
2025 Call For Ethics Reviewers
If you are able and willing to participate in the review process, please sign up at this form. Feel free to share this call with your colleagues.
neurips.cc
July 2, 2025 at 4:06 PM
NeurIPS is seeking additional ethics reviewers this year. If you are able and willing to participate in the review process, please sign up at the form in the link:
neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Please share this call with your colleagues!
neurips.cc/Conferences/...
Please share this call with your colleagues!
Reposted by Mengye Ren
CDS Asst. Prof. @mengyer.bsky.social, Courant PhD students Alex N. Wang and Christopher Hoang, and @ylecun.bsky.social introduce PooDLe: a self-supervised learning method enhancing AI vision in real-world videos by improving small object detection.
nyudatascience.medium.com/learning-to-...
nyudatascience.medium.com/learning-to-...
Learning to See Like Animals: How Small Objects in Dense Video Scenes Challenge AI Vision
PooDLe enhances AI vision in real-world videos by improving small object detection.
nyudatascience.medium.com
June 11, 2025 at 6:55 PM
CDS Asst. Prof. @mengyer.bsky.social, Courant PhD students Alex N. Wang and Christopher Hoang, and @ylecun.bsky.social introduce PooDLe: a self-supervised learning method enhancing AI vision in real-world videos by improving small object detection.
nyudatascience.medium.com/learning-to-...
nyudatascience.medium.com/learning-to-...
Reposted by Mengye Ren
The NeurIPS Position Track is seeking additional reviewers this year. If you'd like to serve or nominate a colleague, please complete our nomination form! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
NeurIPS 2025 Position Paper Track Reviewer Nomination Form
Does this form look suspicious? Report
docs.google.com
May 21, 2025 at 1:00 PM
The NeurIPS Position Track is seeking additional reviewers this year. If you'd like to serve or nominate a colleague, please complete our nomination form! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
The proposed 5% remittance tax on non-citizens is another blatant attack on foreign workers, who've contributed tremendously to the U.S. economy, have little path to citizenship, no birthright for their kids, and will face double taxation on their hard-earned dollars.
May 17, 2025 at 3:05 PM
The proposed 5% remittance tax on non-citizens is another blatant attack on foreign workers, who've contributed tremendously to the U.S. economy, have little path to citizenship, no birthright for their kids, and will face double taxation on their hard-earned dollars.
How can we leverage naturalistic videos for visual SSL? Naturalistic, i.e. uncurated, videos are abundant and can emulate the egocentric perspective.
Our paper at ICLR 2025, PooDLe🐩, proposes a new SSL method to address the challenges of learning from naturalistic videos. 🧵
Our paper at ICLR 2025, PooDLe🐩, proposes a new SSL method to address the challenges of learning from naturalistic videos. 🧵
April 20, 2025 at 8:31 PM
How can we leverage naturalistic videos for visual SSL? Naturalistic, i.e. uncurated, videos are abundant and can emulate the egocentric perspective.
Our paper at ICLR 2025, PooDLe🐩, proposes a new SSL method to address the challenges of learning from naturalistic videos. 🧵
Our paper at ICLR 2025, PooDLe🐩, proposes a new SSL method to address the challenges of learning from naturalistic videos. 🧵
A single man's decision wiped out 20% of the global wealth and still going...
April 8, 2025 at 7:36 PM
A single man's decision wiped out 20% of the global wealth and still going...
America will become a T-shirt manufacturing superpower!
April 5, 2025 at 2:41 PM
America will become a T-shirt manufacturing superpower!
Love that stock market crashing...
April 3, 2025 at 4:31 PM
Love that stock market crashing...
"A French scientist was denied entry to the US after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration." --- So much for freedom of speech.
March 20, 2025 at 1:46 AM
"A French scientist was denied entry to the US after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration." --- So much for freedom of speech.
Not that I am personally affected by the new rules, but desk rejection on reciprocal reviews of every author is not a proportional penalty on junior students and can burden junior PIs who submit papers to wider venues. Plus it hurts the community by throwing away valid reviews.
March 16, 2025 at 2:09 PM
Not that I am personally affected by the new rules, but desk rejection on reciprocal reviews of every author is not a proportional penalty on junior students and can burden junior PIs who submit papers to wider venues. Plus it hurts the community by throwing away valid reviews.