Today is my first day @brighamyoungu.bsky.social! As promised in the 👇 thread (a few weeks late but c'mon ;) ), I've written a post explaining my decision to return to academia _and_ my home town: twkillian.github.io/returning-to... I'm excited for the journey ahead!

Returning to Academia: Motivations and Expectations

Personal research webiste for Taylor W. Killian

twkillian.github.io

Taylor W. Killian@twkillian.bsky.social · 3mo ago

📣 There's never a "best" time to share important updates, especially after sitting on this for so long. I'm joining the faculty @brighamyoungu.bsky.social this Summer as an Assistant Professor in the CS Dept, in preparation for the coming school year. Lots of excitement and a fair bit of nerves. 🧵

📣 There's never a "best" time to share important updates, especially after sitting on this for so long. I'm joining the faculty @brighamyoungu.bsky.social this Summer as an Assistant Professor in the CS Dept, in preparation for the coming school year. Lots of excitement and a fair bit of nerves. 🧵

Unfortunately positive feedback from students, like all positive feedback, embarrasses me and reminds me of the infinite disproportion between what I’ve given the world and what I owe it. But go ahead and send that note! most of your teachers are sane.

Paul Vierthaler@vierth.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I walked into my office this morning to a lovely note from a student, and it will go alongside the others I've gotten over the years. Teaching can be tough at times and it can be easy to fixate on bad reviews, but these serve as reminders of why we do this.

I had some time to reflect on my past 12 months after some long flights following #ICLR. It's been a whirlwind year where I've been lucky to visit so many beautiful places while engaging in scientific discussions. Jotted some reflections down in a blog post: twkillian.github.io/science-is-a...

This has been the README of the Github repo of my personal+academic website since I first started it. And this is my latest commit 😱...

It's our kid's spring break this week. It's been nice having yard work agents work in parallel to my coding agents.

We have the keynote speakers for RLC2026 now! Thrilled to welcome Rika Antonova, Sheila McIlraith, Marc G. Bellemare, Danijar Hafner, Balaraman Ravindran! Details: rl-conference.cc/index.html The RL community is coming together this August in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Hope you make it!

RLC is the _very_ best conference. It's always been great vibes and will continue this for the 2026 version!

Reinforcement Learning Conference@rl-conference.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We have the keynote speakers for RLC2026 now! Thrilled to welcome Rika Antonova, Sheila McIlraith, Marc G. Bellemare, Danijar Hafner, Balaraman Ravindran! Details: rl-conference.cc/index.html The RL community is coming together this August in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Hope you make it!

It’s a real joy being a part of @lilasciences.bsky.social! The momentum inside the company is tangible, it’s nice that it’s being recognized externally as well.

Lila Sciences@lilasciences.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We're honored to be named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies and in the top ten most innovative artificial intelligence companies of 2026! #FCMostInnovative www.fastcompany.com/91495412/art...

Nice work by the ICML chairs ... love it. Signal boosting this to help make it known. I hope that the effect will be that reviewers will less "delegate" (sigh) reviewing to LLMs instead of spending more effort on finding watermarks.

ICML Conference@icmlconf.bsky.social · 5mo ago

To ensure compliance w peer-review policies, ICML has removed 795 reviews (1% of total) by reviewers who used LLMs when they explicitly agreed to not. Consequently, 497 papers (2% of all submissions) of these (reciprocal) reviewers have been desk rejected Details in blog post 👇

RLC2026 Call for Workshops! We’re already live: openreview.net/group?id=rl-... Here's the opportunity to help shape the conference & spotlight your own RL focus areas. Call: rl-conference.cc/call_for_wor... Deadline: Mar 12 (AoE) And don't forget the awesome banquet :) www.cirquedusoleil.com/ludo

RLC 2026 Call for Workshop is live on OpenReview! Submission deadline: Mar 12 (AoE). Full details here: rl-conference.cc/call_for_wor... @glenberseth.bsky.social @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social @twkillian.bsky.social @schaul.bsky.social @sologen.bsky.social @audurand.bsky.social @bradknox.bsky.social

Reinforcement Learning Conference@rl-conference.bsky.social · 5mo ago

RLC2026 Call for Workshops! We’re already live: openreview.net/group?id=rl-... Here's the opportunity to help shape the conference & spotlight your own RL focus areas. Call: rl-conference.cc/call_for_wor... Deadline: Mar 12 (AoE) And don't forget the awesome banquet :) www.cirquedusoleil.com/ludo

RLC attendees will also enjoy the banquet featuring a theatrical dinner show by Cirque du Soleil (LUDŌ): www.cirquedusoleil.com/ludo All the more reason not to miss the chance to be part of RLC 2026!

LUDÕ | Cirque du Soleil

Discover Nuevo Vallarta's new resident dinner show LUDÕ. Immerse yourself in a multi-sensory water-themed experience.

cirquedusoleil.com

Only ~7 days to go until the full paper deadline (Mar 5, AOE)! Wishing everyone a strong close to the submission cycle.

Reinforcement Learning Conference@rl-conference.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Quick reminder for everyone grinding on their RLC 2026 papers, only ~3 weeks to go! The submission site opens in just a few days (Feb 17). Deadlines: ⏳ March 1 (AoE): Abstract Submission ⏳ March 5 (AoE): Full Paper Submission Good luck with the final changes!

RLC 2026 Call for Workshops is up! This is the opportunity to bring the attention of the community to the topics that you find the most important in RL!

Taylor W. Killian@twkillian.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Workshops, held on the first day, are a primary feature of @rl-conference.bsky.social and have set a delightfully inquisitive tone. Discussions started at both workshops I've been a part of in the past persisted through the week, with some still ongoing! CfW here: rl-conference.cc/call_for_wor...

Check out the Call for Workshops at RLC this year. There is still nearly a month before the deadline, we are looking forward to your proposals!

Taylor W. Killian@twkillian.bsky.social · 6mo ago

We're thrilled to share that the Call for Workshops for this year's @rl-conference.bsky.social is now live! As Workshop co-chair (alongside the wonderful Raksha Kumaraswamy and @claireve.bsky.social) we are looking forward to seeing the proposals for workshops that we receive. LINK IN NEXT POST

Exciting news... Percepta is growing into doing critical industry transformations in Europe, and that means we're expanding to the UK! If you're an Applied AI engineer looking to work in the UK check it out: jobs.ashbyhq.com/percepta/55a...

Applied AI Engineer

WHO WE ARE Percepta’s mission is to transform critical institutions with applied AI. We care that industries that power the world (e.g. healthcare, manufacturing, energy) benefit from frontier techno...

jobs.ashbyhq.com

The workshops are maybe the best part of RLC. Bring us your workshops that could never happen anywhere else!

Taylor W. Killian@twkillian.bsky.social · 6mo ago

We're thrilled to share that the Call for Workshops for this year's @rl-conference.bsky.social is now live! As Workshop co-chair (alongside the wonderful Raksha Kumaraswamy and @claireve.bsky.social) we are looking forward to seeing the proposals for workshops that we receive. LINK IN NEXT POST

3 weeks to get your RLC papers in shape! And to get the word out to those who have yet to experience an RLC review process.

Reinforcement Learning Conference@rl-conference.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Quick reminder for everyone grinding on their RLC 2026 papers, only ~3 weeks to go! The submission site opens in just a few days (Feb 17). Deadlines: ⏳ March 1 (AoE): Abstract Submission ⏳ March 5 (AoE): Full Paper Submission Good luck with the final changes!

🚀 Excited to share REPPO, a new on-policy RL agent! TL;DR: Replace PPO with REPPO for fewer hyperparameter headaches and more robust training. REPPO, led by @cvoelcker.bsky.social, will be presented at ICLR 2026. How does it work? 🧵👇

We're thrilled to share that the Call for Workshops for this year's @rl-conference.bsky.social is now live! As Workshop co-chair (alongside the wonderful Raksha Kumaraswamy and @claireve.bsky.social) we are looking forward to seeing the proposals for workshops that we receive. LINK IN NEXT POST

One paper accepted to ICML with one paper rejected as well. It’s called balance (and measured frustration) #icml2025

Shipping a copy of Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" to every ICML meta-reviewer

We're putting in final planning and preparation steps this week to be ready for #ICLR2025. I'm excited to be attending, in part to help represent @mbzuai.bsky.social and @llm360.bsky.social as well as recruit Research Scientists and Engineers to our new lab in the Bay Area! (see next for more info)

I used to dream of days like this. Mowed the lawn, trimmed some hedges, pruned a few trees to let more sun into our yard, picked the rest of our orange tree (we yielded 658 🍊this year!) had the kids help clean up the branches, etc. #suburbandadsaturdays

Real-world RL for the public good! Love to see it!

Eugene Vinitsky 🍒@eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · last yr.

A year later of a multi-agent RL controlled variable speed limit system: arxiv.org/abs/2503.01017 Fewer crashes, quicker responses, quicker warnings

A year later of a multi-agent RL controlled variable speed limit system: arxiv.org/abs/2503.01017 Fewer crashes, quicker responses, quicker warnings

Real-World Deployment and Assessment of a Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning-Based Variable Speed Limit Control System

This article presents the first field deployment of a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) based variable speed limit (VSL) control system on Interstate 24 (I-24) near Nashville, Tennessee. We de...

arxiv.org

Reviewing a paper right now and I'm having lots of "I wish that I'd written this!" feelings. Great sign for the authors tbh.

Congratulations Andy and Rich! You've given RL yet another place in the history books. I can't imagine how you're feeling right now, but it must be amazing to reflect on how far the ideas have come, especially after all the care and dedication you gave them. awards.acm.org/about/2024-t...