Topics

Antoine Baker, Indaco Biazzo, Alfredo Braunstein, Giovanni Catania, Luca Dall’Asta, Alessandro Ingrosso, Florent Krzakala, Fabio Mazza, Marc Mezard, Anna Paola Muntoni, Maria Refinetti, Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Lenka Zdeborova

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Topic 09

fairness

3 publications

The Interplay of Data Structure and Imbalance in the Learning Dynamics of Diffusion Models

Flavio Nicoletti, Chenxiao Ma, Enrico Ventura, Luca Saglietti, Stefano Sarao Mannelli

arXiv preprint

Bias-inducing geometries: an exactly solvable data model with fairness implications

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Federica Gerace, Negar Rostamzadeh, Luca Saglietti

Phys. Rev. E 112, 025304 (2025)

Bias in Motion: Theoretical Insights into the Dynamics of Bias in SGD Training

Anchit Jain, Rozhin Nobahari, Aristide Baratin, Stefano Sarao Mannelli

NeurIPS 2024

Topic 10

fatigue

1 publication

A meta-learning framework for rationalizing cognitive fatigue in neural systems

Yujun Li, Rodrigo Carrasco-Davis, Younes Strittmatter, Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Sebastian Musslick

CogSci 2024 (Oral)

Topic 11

landscape

7 publications

Sharp description of local minima in the loss landscape of high-dimensional two-layer ReLU neural networks

Jie Huang, Bruno Loureiro, Stefano Sarao Mannelli

ICML 2026

Optimization and Generalization of Shallow Neural Networks with Quadratic Activation Functions

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Eric Vanden-Eijnden, Lenka Zdeborova

NeurIPS 2020

Complex Dynamics in Simple Neural Networks: Understanding Gradient Flow in Phase Retrieval

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Giulio Biroli, Chiara Cammarota, Florent Krzakala, Pierfrancesco Urbani, Lenka Zdeborova

NeurIPS 2020

Thresholds of descending algorithms in inference problems

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Lenka Zdeborova

Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment

Marvels and pitfalls of the Langevin algorithm in noisy high-dimensional inference

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Giulio Biroli, Chiara Cammarota, Florent Krzakala, Pierfrancesco Urbani, Lenka Zdeborova

Physical Review X

Who is Afraid of Big Bad Minima? Analysis of gradient-flow in spiked matrix-tensor models

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Giulio Biroli, Chiara Cammarota, Florent Krzakala, Lenka Zdeborova

NeurIPS 2019 (Spotlight)

Passed & Spurious: Descent Algorithms and Local Minima in Spiked Matrix-Tensor Models

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Florent Krzakala, Pierfrancesco Urbani, Lenka Zdeborova

ICML 2019

Topic 12

large language models

1 publication

Position: the Stochastic Parrot in the Coal Mine. Model Collapse is a Threat to Low-Resource Communities

Devon Jarvis, Richard Klein, Benjamin Rosman, Steven James, Stefano Sarao Mannelli

ICML 2026 (Spotlight)

Topic 13

lottery ticket hypothesis

1 publication

Tilting the Odds at the Lottery: the Interplay of Overparameterisation and Curricula in Neural Networks

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Yaraslau Ivashinka, Andrew Saxe, Luca Saglietti

ICML 2024

Topic 14

machine learning

1 publication

Thinking of Neural Networks Like a Physicist: The Statistical Physics of Machine Learning

Kai Jappe Sandbrink, Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Florent Krzakala

Proceedings of the Analytical Connectionism Schools 2023--2024, PMLR 320:15-41, 2026

Topic 15

model collapse

1 publication

Position: the Stochastic Parrot in the Coal Mine. Model Collapse is a Threat to Low-Resource Communities

Devon Jarvis, Richard Klein, Benjamin Rosman, Steven James, Stefano Sarao Mannelli

ICML 2026 (Spotlight)

Topic 16

momentum

1 publication

Analytical Study of Momentum-Based Acceleration Methods in Paradigmatic High-Dimensional Non-Convex Problems

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Pierfrancesco Urbani

NeurIPS 2021

Topic 17

neural networks

1 publication

Sharp description of local minima in the loss landscape of high-dimensional two-layer ReLU neural networks

Jie Huang, Bruno Loureiro, Stefano Sarao Mannelli

ICML 2026

Topic 18

optimal control

1 publication

Optimal Protocols for Continual Learning via Statistical Physics and Control Theory

Francesco Mori, Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Francesca Mignacco

ICLR 2025; J. Stat. Mech. 2025, 084004

Topic 19

optimisation

8 publications

Topic 20

reinforcement learning

1 publication

RL Perceptron: Generalization Dynamics of Policy Learning in High Dimensions

Nishil Patel, Sebastian Lee, Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Sebastian Goldt, Andrew Saxe

Phys. Rev. X 15, 021051 (2025)

Topic 21

review

2 publications

Thinking of Neural Networks Like a Physicist: The Statistical Physics of Machine Learning

Kai Jappe Sandbrink, Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Florent Krzakala

Proceedings of the Analytical Connectionism Schools 2023--2024, PMLR 320:15-41, 2026

Thresholds of descending algorithms in inference problems

Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Lenka Zdeborova

Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment

Topic 22

spurious correlations

1 publication

Bias in Motion: Theoretical Insights into the Dynamics of Bias in SGD Training

Anchit Jain, Rozhin Nobahari, Aristide Baratin, Stefano Sarao Mannelli

NeurIPS 2024

Topic 23

statistical physics

1 publication

Thinking of Neural Networks Like a Physicist: The Statistical Physics of Machine Learning

Kai Jappe Sandbrink, Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Florent Krzakala

Proceedings of the Analytical Connectionism Schools 2023--2024, PMLR 320:15-41, 2026

Topic 24

transfer learning

2 publications

How to choose the right transfer learning protocol? A qualitative analysis in a controlled set-up

Federica Gerace, Diego Doimo, Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Luca Saglietti, Alessandro Laio

TMLR

Probing transfer learning with a model of synthetic correlated datasets

Federica Gerace, Luca Saglietti, Stefano Sarao Mannelli, Andrew Saxe, Lenka Zdeborová

Machine Learning: Science and Technology