Oumar Kaba
oumarkaba.bsky.social
Oumar Kaba
@oumarkaba.bsky.social
Ph.D. Student at @Mila_Quebec / @mcgillu
• ML, Physics, Math • Science Comms Enthusiast. Former intern
@MSFTResearch AI4Science
Symmetry is the fundamental property of crystals, yet generative models don't yield crystals with true symmetries
We solved that with SymmCD and can get crystals from any of the 230 space groups

Learn more at our #ICLR poster w/ @dnllvy.bsky.social @sibasmarak.bsky.social!

arxiv.org/abs/2502.03638
April 24, 2025 at 1:27 AM
Reposted by Oumar Kaba
🚨 HUGE news from Canada's tricouncils who are harmonizing their scholarship & fellowship programs, upping the total number (huzzah!), and critically, allowing foreigners to apply for doctoral and postdoc fellowships. Want to work with me? Get in touch! 🇨🇦🧪⚒️

www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/NewsDetail-D...
NSERC - Latest News - Launch of the new Harmonized Tri-agency Scholarship and Fellowship programs
As announced in Budget 2024, the scholarship and fellowship programs administered by the three federal research funding agencies – the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) – have been streamlined into a new harmonized talent program called the Canada Research Training Awards Suite (CRTAS) that will open for applications in summer 2025.
www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca
March 14, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Oumar Kaba
Holy moly. I'm trying to write an academic paper, and nearly every application I'm using is not only offering Generative AI as an option for writing, but *pushing it* -- pervading the design to the point where a simple misclick would make my content AI-generated. Here's why that's a problem. 🧵
January 27, 2025 at 6:38 PM
Diffusion models for crystals show great promise, but mostly don't generate samples with realistic symmetries—a defining property of crystals!
We tackled this with SymmCD, leveraging space groups, Wyckoff positions and asymmetric units. Catch @dnllvy.bsky.social spotlight at AI4Mat to learn more 🌟
I'm at #NeurIPS2024 this week, presenting our work SymmCD at the #AI4Mat workshop! It's a new diffusion model for crystals that bakes in the crystallographic symmetry.

openreview.net/forum?id=V7x...

Come check it out, and feel free to message me if you want to chat!
December 11, 2024 at 3:19 PM
Reposted by Oumar Kaba
thinking of calling this "The Illusion Illusion"

(more examples below)
December 1, 2024 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Oumar Kaba
Delighted to be in Leeds joining the School of Computing! Fantastic first impressions — like a "less offensive London" (youtu.be/watch?v=_6_VVLgrgFI). Stay tuned for a PhD position starting next October. Meanwhile, drop me a message with your CV and research interests—I'd love to hear from you!
Pleased to welcome @repromancer.bsky.social - a computational neuroscientist - to the @universityofleeds.bsky.social today - working on the boundary of neuroscience and AI. Welcome Jonathan!
November 29, 2024 at 4:02 PM
Reposted by Oumar Kaba
congratulations, @ian-goodfellow.bsky.social, for the test-of-time award at @neuripsconf.bsky.social!

this award reminds me of how GAN started with this one email ian sent to the Mila (then Lisa) lab mailing list in May 2014. super insightful and amazing execution!
November 27, 2024 at 6:31 PM