Ida Momennejad
@neuroai.bsky.social
Principal Researcher @ Microsoft Research.
AI, RL, cog neuro, philosophy.
www.momen-nejad.org
AI, RL, cog neuro, philosophy.
www.momen-nejad.org
Pinned
Ida Momennejad
@neuroai.bsky.social
· Jun 20
Pleased to share our ICML Spotlight with @eberleoliver.bsky.social, Thomas McGee, Hamza Giaffar, @taylorwwebb.bsky.social.
Position: We Need An Algorithmic Understanding of Generative AI
What algorithms do LLMs actually learn and use to solve problems?🧵1/n
openreview.net/forum?id=eax...
Position: We Need An Algorithmic Understanding of Generative AI
What algorithms do LLMs actually learn and use to solve problems?🧵1/n
openreview.net/forum?id=eax...
Pleased to share new work with @sflippl.bsky.social @eberleoliver.bsky.social @thomasmcgee.bsky.social & undergrad interns at Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA.
Algorithmic Primitives and Compositional Geometry of Reasoning in Language Models
www.arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15987
🧵1/n
Algorithmic Primitives and Compositional Geometry of Reasoning in Language Models
www.arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15987
🧵1/n
October 27, 2025 at 6:13 PM
Pleased to share new work with @sflippl.bsky.social @eberleoliver.bsky.social @thomasmcgee.bsky.social & undergrad interns at Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA.
Algorithmic Primitives and Compositional Geometry of Reasoning in Language Models
www.arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15987
🧵1/n
Algorithmic Primitives and Compositional Geometry of Reasoning in Language Models
www.arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15987
🧵1/n
MSR NYC is hiring senior researchers in AI, both broadly in AI/ML & in specific areas (post-training, test-time scaling, modular transfer learning, science of deep learning).
aka.ms/msrnyc-jobs
We're reviewing on a rolling basis, interviews in Nov/Dec. Please apply here: tinyurl.com/MSRNYCjob
aka.ms/msrnyc-jobs
We're reviewing on a rolling basis, interviews in Nov/Dec. Please apply here: tinyurl.com/MSRNYCjob
Microsoft Research Lab - New York City - Microsoft Research
Apply for a research position at Microsoft Research New York & collaborate with academia to advance economics research, prediction markets & ML.
aka.ms
October 27, 2025 at 5:11 PM
MSR NYC is hiring senior researchers in AI, both broadly in AI/ML & in specific areas (post-training, test-time scaling, modular transfer learning, science of deep learning).
aka.ms/msrnyc-jobs
We're reviewing on a rolling basis, interviews in Nov/Dec. Please apply here: tinyurl.com/MSRNYCjob
aka.ms/msrnyc-jobs
We're reviewing on a rolling basis, interviews in Nov/Dec. Please apply here: tinyurl.com/MSRNYCjob
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools, writes @neurograce.bsky.social. Hear from 10 experts in the field.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...
Connecting neural activity, perception in the visual system
Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools. I asked nine experts to weigh in.
www.thetransmitter.org
October 13, 2025 at 1:23 PM
Figuring out how the brain uses information from visual neurons may require new tools, writes @neurograce.bsky.social. Hear from 10 experts in the field.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/the-big-pict...
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
Can Only Meat Machines be Conscious? New paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, free download until November 26 with this URL: authors.elsevier.com/a/1luwh4sIRv...
authors.elsevier.com
October 8, 2025 at 1:06 PM
Can Only Meat Machines be Conscious? New paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, free download until November 26 with this URL: authors.elsevier.com/a/1luwh4sIRv...
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
Very excited to share that our work (together with co-first author Shanka Subhra Mondal and @neuroai.bsky.social ) on a brain-inspired architecture for planning with LLMs is now out in Nature Communications! www.nature.com/articles/s41... (thread below)
A brain-inspired agentic architecture to improve planning with LLMs - Nature Communications
Multi-step planning is a challenge for LLMs. Here, the authors introduce a brain-inspired Modular Agentic Planner that decomposes planning into specialized LLM modules, improving performance across tasks and highlighting the value of cognitive neuroscience for LLM design.
www.nature.com
October 6, 2025 at 9:51 PM
Very excited to share that our work (together with co-first author Shanka Subhra Mondal and @neuroai.bsky.social ) on a brain-inspired architecture for planning with LLMs is now out in Nature Communications! www.nature.com/articles/s41... (thread below)
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
@science.org just dropped a story covering this preprint! Check it out below, and thanks to @cathleenogrady.bsky.social for the great write-up! www.science.org/content/arti...
October 1, 2025 at 8:10 AM
@science.org just dropped a story covering this preprint! Check it out below, and thanks to @cathleenogrady.bsky.social for the great write-up! www.science.org/content/arti...
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
Reading papers is a basic skill (and dare I say duty?) of scientists, and I include medical doctors in that group. Keeping abreast of the literature is a foundational part of our professions. There aren’t good shortcuts. In any case, reading papers regularly is fun.
arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/s...
arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/s...
Science journalists find ChatGPT is bad at summarizing scientific papers
LLM “tended to sacrifice accuracy for simplicity” when writing news briefs.
arstechnica.com
September 21, 2025 at 6:22 AM
Reading papers is a basic skill (and dare I say duty?) of scientists, and I include medical doctors in that group. Keeping abreast of the literature is a foundational part of our professions. There aren’t good shortcuts. In any case, reading papers regularly is fun.
arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/s...
arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/s...
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
Also to clarify, the cost is $100K per year of the visa, so it is actually $300K for a 3-year visa. As postdocs cost about $100K/year, this fee doubles the cost of postdocs on H1-B visas.
September 20, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Also to clarify, the cost is $100K per year of the visa, so it is actually $300K for a 3-year visa. As postdocs cost about $100K/year, this fee doubles the cost of postdocs on H1-B visas.
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
🚨Our preprint is online!🚨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?
Read on to find out more! 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?
Read on to find out more! 🧵
September 19, 2025 at 1:05 PM
🚨Our preprint is online!🚨
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?
Read on to find out more! 🧵
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
How do #dopamine neurons perform the key calculations in reinforcement #learning?
Read on to find out more! 🧵
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
New book— just got my copy! I know people often don’t read book chapters but I think that’s a mistake. They are usually much more reflective and wide ranging than journal articles.
September 16, 2025 at 10:20 PM
New book— just got my copy! I know people often don’t read book chapters but I think that’s a mistake. They are usually much more reflective and wide ranging than journal articles.
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
I have just dropped a new version of my academicdb project, which helps prolific researchers generate a CV automatically. Now with a web interface! If you are interested, please try it out and let me know what you think - it takes a bit of setup work but then runs easily using Docker.
GitHub - poldrack/academicdb: Project to maintain a database for CV/website rendering
Project to maintain a database for CV/website rendering - poldrack/academicdb
github.com
September 18, 2025 at 7:39 PM
I have just dropped a new version of my academicdb project, which helps prolific researchers generate a CV automatically. Now with a web interface! If you are interested, please try it out and let me know what you think - it takes a bit of setup work but then runs easily using Docker.
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
🧠 New preprint: Why do deep neural networks predict brain responses so well?
We find a striking dissociation: it’s not shared object recognition. Alignment is driven by sensitivity to texture-like local statistics.
📊 Study: n=57, 624k trials, 5 models doi.org/10.1101/2025...
We find a striking dissociation: it’s not shared object recognition. Alignment is driven by sensitivity to texture-like local statistics.
📊 Study: n=57, 624k trials, 5 models doi.org/10.1101/2025...
September 8, 2025 at 6:32 PM
🧠 New preprint: Why do deep neural networks predict brain responses so well?
We find a striking dissociation: it’s not shared object recognition. Alignment is driven by sensitivity to texture-like local statistics.
📊 Study: n=57, 624k trials, 5 models doi.org/10.1101/2025...
We find a striking dissociation: it’s not shared object recognition. Alignment is driven by sensitivity to texture-like local statistics.
📊 Study: n=57, 624k trials, 5 models doi.org/10.1101/2025...
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
@benhayden.bsky.social
@tyrellturing.bsky.social
@jmgrohneuro.bsky.social
@pessoabrain.bsky.social
I see a lot of talk on here about how we should avoid
"x does y" talk because the brain is "a dynamic, reverberant, reciprocally interconnected system".
But this does not follow.
A thread...
@tyrellturing.bsky.social
@jmgrohneuro.bsky.social
@pessoabrain.bsky.social
I see a lot of talk on here about how we should avoid
"x does y" talk because the brain is "a dynamic, reverberant, reciprocally interconnected system".
But this does not follow.
A thread...
September 5, 2025 at 9:57 PM
@benhayden.bsky.social
@tyrellturing.bsky.social
@jmgrohneuro.bsky.social
@pessoabrain.bsky.social
I see a lot of talk on here about how we should avoid
"x does y" talk because the brain is "a dynamic, reverberant, reciprocally interconnected system".
But this does not follow.
A thread...
@tyrellturing.bsky.social
@jmgrohneuro.bsky.social
@pessoabrain.bsky.social
I see a lot of talk on here about how we should avoid
"x does y" talk because the brain is "a dynamic, reverberant, reciprocally interconnected system".
But this does not follow.
A thread...
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
This paper finds LLMs' ability to understand that others have different beliefs (Theory of Mind) comes from 0.001% of their parameters. Break those specific weights & the model loses both its ability to track what others know AND language comprehension
Interesting implications for models (& minds?)
Interesting implications for models (& minds?)
September 4, 2025 at 6:43 PM
This paper finds LLMs' ability to understand that others have different beliefs (Theory of Mind) comes from 0.001% of their parameters. Break those specific weights & the model loses both its ability to track what others know AND language comprehension
Interesting implications for models (& minds?)
Interesting implications for models (& minds?)
What are your pros/cons of using AI in science?
Feel free to respond wrt use or harm in the design of experiments, coding experiments, coding analysis, brain storming analysis, summarizing literature, synthesis of ideas, modeling, novel model development, mathematical proofs, writing, editing.
Feel free to respond wrt use or harm in the design of experiments, coding experiments, coding analysis, brain storming analysis, summarizing literature, synthesis of ideas, modeling, novel model development, mathematical proofs, writing, editing.
September 3, 2025 at 9:09 PM
What are your pros/cons of using AI in science?
Feel free to respond wrt use or harm in the design of experiments, coding experiments, coding analysis, brain storming analysis, summarizing literature, synthesis of ideas, modeling, novel model development, mathematical proofs, writing, editing.
Feel free to respond wrt use or harm in the design of experiments, coding experiments, coding analysis, brain storming analysis, summarizing literature, synthesis of ideas, modeling, novel model development, mathematical proofs, writing, editing.
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
An ancient and “nearly naked” black hole that astronomers believe may have been created in the first fraction of a second after the big bang has been spotted by the James Webb space telescope. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
‘A paradigm change’: black hole spotted that may have been created moments after big bang
Sighting by James Webb space telescope of black hole with sparse halo of material could upend theories of the universe
www.theguardian.com
September 2, 2025 at 4:49 PM
An ancient and “nearly naked” black hole that astronomers believe may have been created in the first fraction of a second after the big bang has been spotted by the James Webb space telescope. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
Today is publication day for this beautiful thing. I hope that it will tell a broad audience what historians of science have now long recognized: that alchemy was not a superstitious aberration but rather, an important phase in the history of ideas and of manufacturing.
September 2, 2025 at 9:27 AM
Today is publication day for this beautiful thing. I hope that it will tell a broad audience what historians of science have now long recognized: that alchemy was not a superstitious aberration but rather, an important phase in the history of ideas and of manufacturing.
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
“In the late 1960s, Dr. Rossiter was working on her Ph.D. at Yale, when a comment from one of her male professors puzzled her. Who, she had asked, were the women in science? There were none, he said. Another professor mumbled something about Marie Curie being the exception.”🙃
Here's a #GiftLink for those who want to read the full NYT obit of historian of science & gender, Margaret Rossiter. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/s... #histSTM 🧪🗃️
August 31, 2025 at 8:21 AM
“In the late 1960s, Dr. Rossiter was working on her Ph.D. at Yale, when a comment from one of her male professors puzzled her. Who, she had asked, were the women in science? There were none, he said. Another professor mumbled something about Marie Curie being the exception.”🙃
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
Where do some of Reinforcement Learning's great thinkers stand today?
Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels
(guess who talked about which!)
Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels
(guess who talked about which!)
August 27, 2025 at 12:46 PM
Where do some of Reinforcement Learning's great thinkers stand today?
Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels
(guess who talked about which!)
Find out! Keynotes of the RL Conference are online:
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Wanting vs liking, Agent factories, Theoretical limit of LLMs, Pluralist value, RL teachers, Knowledge flywheels
(guess who talked about which!)
This summer I have the great pleasure of working w incredible students!
Grads: Thomas McGee (UCLA), Sam Lippl (Columbia), Millie Preece (Cambridge),
undergrads: Salma, Kimberly, Ziwen, Pierce, the RIPS program at IPAM (Institute for pure & applied math) UCLA.
Excited to share our new research soon📝.
Grads: Thomas McGee (UCLA), Sam Lippl (Columbia), Millie Preece (Cambridge),
undergrads: Salma, Kimberly, Ziwen, Pierce, the RIPS program at IPAM (Institute for pure & applied math) UCLA.
Excited to share our new research soon📝.
August 25, 2025 at 2:46 PM
This summer I have the great pleasure of working w incredible students!
Grads: Thomas McGee (UCLA), Sam Lippl (Columbia), Millie Preece (Cambridge),
undergrads: Salma, Kimberly, Ziwen, Pierce, the RIPS program at IPAM (Institute for pure & applied math) UCLA.
Excited to share our new research soon📝.
Grads: Thomas McGee (UCLA), Sam Lippl (Columbia), Millie Preece (Cambridge),
undergrads: Salma, Kimberly, Ziwen, Pierce, the RIPS program at IPAM (Institute for pure & applied math) UCLA.
Excited to share our new research soon📝.
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
Is the hippocampus best understood in term of discrete subfields or functional gradients?
Functional gradients are recapitulated within each hippocampal subfield, supporting a role for both discrete & continuously changing computations.
Neat work by Bouffard, @barense.bsky.social, & Moscovitch!
Functional gradients are recapitulated within each hippocampal subfield, supporting a role for both discrete & continuously changing computations.
Neat work by Bouffard, @barense.bsky.social, & Moscovitch!
Discrete Subfields and Continuous Gradients Coexist: A Multi-Scale View of Hippocampal Organization
The human hippocampus is studied via two competing frameworks: one dividing it into discrete anatomical subfields with distinct computational processes, and another describing it as a continuous, func...
www.biorxiv.org
August 24, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Is the hippocampus best understood in term of discrete subfields or functional gradients?
Functional gradients are recapitulated within each hippocampal subfield, supporting a role for both discrete & continuously changing computations.
Neat work by Bouffard, @barense.bsky.social, & Moscovitch!
Functional gradients are recapitulated within each hippocampal subfield, supporting a role for both discrete & continuously changing computations.
Neat work by Bouffard, @barense.bsky.social, & Moscovitch!
"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom but to set a limit to infinite error.”
- Bertolt Brecht
The Life of Galileo
- Bertolt Brecht
The Life of Galileo
August 18, 2025 at 6:06 PM
"The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom but to set a limit to infinite error.”
- Bertolt Brecht
The Life of Galileo
- Bertolt Brecht
The Life of Galileo
Reposted by Ida Momennejad
The rumors are true! #CCN2026 will be held at NYU. @toddgureckis.bsky.social and I will be executive-chairing. Get in touch if you want to be involved!
August 15, 2025 at 4:43 PM
The rumors are true! #CCN2026 will be held at NYU. @toddgureckis.bsky.social and I will be executive-chairing. Get in touch if you want to be involved!
Are we in the new dark age yet?
August 12, 2025 at 11:45 AM
Are we in the new dark age yet?