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Enhancing Tabular Foundation Models

Neural Information Processing Systems

Since the seminal work of TabPFN [16], research on tabular foundation models (TFMs) based on in-context learning (ICL) has challenged long-standing paradigms in machine learning. Without seeing any real-world data, models pretrained on purely synthetic datasets generalize remarkably well across diverse datasets, often using only a moderate number of in-context examples. This shifts the focus in tabular machine learning from model architecture design to the design of synthetic datasets, or, more precisely, to the prior distributions that generate them. Yet the guiding principles for prior design remain poorly understood. This work marks the first attempt to address the gap. We systematically investigate and identify key properties of synthetic priors that allow pretrained TFMs to generalize well. Based on these insights, we introduce MITRA 1, a TFM trained on a curated mixture of synthetic priors selected for their diversity, distinctiveness, and performance on real-world tabular data. MITRA consistently outperforms state-of-the-art TFMs, such as TabPFNv2 [17] and TabICL [29], across both classification and regression benchmarks, with better sample efficiency.


Preference-Guided Diffusion for Multi-Objective Offline Optimization

Neural Information Processing Systems

Offline multi-objective optimization aims to identify Pareto-optimal solutions given a dataset of designs and their objective values. In this work, we propose a preference-guided diffusion model that generates Pareto-optimal designs by leveraging a classifier-based guidance mechanism. Our guidance classifier is a preference model trained to predict the probability that one design dominates another, directing the diffusion model toward optimal regions of the design space. Crucially, this preference model generalizes beyond the training distribution, enabling the discovery of Pareto-optimal solutions outside the observed dataset. We introduce a novel diversity-aware preference guidance, augmenting Pareto dominance preference with diversity criteria. This ensures that generated solutions are optimal and well-distributed across the objective space, a capability absent in prior generative methods for offline multi-objective optimization. We evaluate our approach on various continuous offline multi-objective optimization tasks and find that it consistently outperforms other inverse/generative approaches while remaining competitive with forward/ surrogate-based optimization methods. Our results highlight the effectiveness of classifier-guided diffusion models in generating diverse and high-quality solutions that approximate the Pareto front well.


Paper2Poster: Towards Multimodal Poster Automation from Scientific Papers

Neural Information Processing Systems

Academic poster generation is a crucial yet challenging task in scientific communication, requiring the compression of long-context interleaved documents into a single, visually coherent page. To address this challenge, we introduce the first benchmark and metric suite for poster generation, which pairs recent conference papers with author-designed posters and evaluates outputs on (i) Visual Quality--semantic alignment with human posters, (ii) Textual Coherence--language fluency, (iii) Holistic Assessment--six fine-grained aesthetic and informational criteria scored by a VLM-as-judge, and notably (iv) PaperQuiz--the poster's ability to convey core paper content as measured by VLMs answering generated quizzes. Building on this benchmark, we propose PosterAgent, a top-down, visualin-the-loop multi-agent pipeline: the (a) Parser distills the paper into a structured asset library; the (b) Planner aligns text-visual pairs into a binary-tree layout that preserves reading order and spatial balance; and the (c) Painter-Commenter loop refines each panel by executing rendering code and using VLM feedback to eliminate overflow and ensure alignment. In our comprehensive evaluation, we find that GPT-4o outputs--though visually appealing at first glance--often exhibit noisy text and poor PaperQuiz scores, and we find that reader engagement is the primary aesthetic bottleneck, as human-designed posters rely largely on visual semantics to convey meaning. Our fully open-source variants (e.g., based on the Qwen-2.5 series) outperform existing 4o-driven multi-agent systems across nearly all metrics, while using 87%fewer tokens. It transforms a 22-page paper into a finalized yet editable '.pptx' poster -- all for just $0.005. These findings chart clear directions for the next generation of fully automated poster-generation models.



Encoder-Decoder Diffusion Language Models for Efficient Training and Inference

Neural Information Processing Systems

Discrete diffusion models enable parallel token sampling for faster inference than autoregressive approaches. However, prior diffusion models use a decoder-only architecture, which requires sampling algorithms that invoke the full network at every denoising step and incur high computational cost. Our key insight is that discrete diffusion models perform two types of computation: 1) representing clean tokens and 2) denoising corrupted tokens, which enables us to use separate modules for each task. We propose an encoder-decoder architecture to accelerate discrete diffusion inference, which relies on an encoder to represent clean tokens and a lightweight decoder to iteratively refine a noised sequence. We also show that this architecture enables faster training of block diffusion models, which partition sequences into blocks for better quality and are commonly used in diffusion language model inference. We introduce a framework for Efficient Encoder-Decoder Diffusion (E2D2), consisting of an architecture with specialized training and sampling algorithms, and we show that E2D2 achieves superior trade-offs between generation quality and inference throughput on summarization, translation, and mathematical reasoning tasks. We provide the code1, model weights, and blog post on the project page: https://m-arriola.com/e2d2.


InfMasking: Unleashing Synergistic Information by Contrastive Multimodal Interactions

Neural Information Processing Systems

In multimodal representation learning, synergistic interactions between modalities not only provide complementary information but also create unique outcomes through specific interaction patterns that no single modality could achieve alone. Existing methods may struggle to effectively capture the full spectrum of synergistic information, leading to suboptimal performance in tasks where such interactions are critical. This is particularly problematic because synergistic information constitutes the fundamental value proposition of multimodal representation. To address this challenge, we introduce InfMasking, a contrastive synergistic information extraction method designed to enhance synergistic information through an Infinite Masking strategy. InfMasking stochastically occludes most features from each modality during fusion, preserving only partial information to create representations with varied synergistic patterns.


MaintainCoder: Maintainable Code Generation Under Dynamic Requirements

Neural Information Processing Systems

Modern code generation has made significant strides in functional correctness and execution efficiency. However, these systems often overlook a critical dimension in real-world software development: maintainability. To handle dynamic requirements with minimal rework, we propose MaintainCoder as a pioneering solution. It integrates the Waterfall model, design patterns, and multi-agent collaboration to systematically enhance cohesion, reduce coupling, achieving clear responsibility boundaries and better maintainability. We also introduce MaintainBench, a benchmark comprising requirement changes and novel dynamic metrics on maintenance efforts. Experiments demonstrate that existing code generation methods struggle to meet maintainability standards when requirements evolve. In contrast, MaintainCoder improves dynamic maintainability metrics by more than 60% with even higher correctness of initial codes. Furthermore, while static metrics fail to accurately reflect maintainability and even contradict each other, our proposed dynamic metrics exhibit high consistency. Our work not only provides the foundation for maintainable code generation, but also highlights the need for more realistic and comprehensive code generation research.


Fast MRI for All: Bridging Access Gaps by Training without Raw Data

Neural Information Processing Systems

Physics-driven deep learning (PD-DL) approaches have become popular for improved reconstruction of fast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Though PD-DL offers higher acceleration rates than existing clinical fast MRI techniques, their use has been limited outside specialized MRI centers. A key challenge is generalization to rare pathologies or different populations, noted in multiple studies, with fine-tuning on target populations suggested for improvement. However, current approaches for PD-DL training require access to raw k-space measurements, which is typically only available at specialized MRI centers that have research agreements for such data access. This is especially an issue for rural and under-resourced areas, where commercial MRI scanners only provide access to a final reconstructed image.


LibriBrain: Over 50 Hours of Within-Subject MEG to Improve Speech Decoding Methods at Scale

Neural Information Processing Systems

LibriBrain represents the largest single-subject MEG dataset to date for speech decoding, with over 50 hours of recordings--5 larger than the next comparable dataset and 50 larger than most. This unprecedented'depth' of within-subject data enables exploration of neural representations at a scale previously unavailable with non-invasive methods. LibriBrain comprises high-quality MEG recordings together with detailed annotations from a single participant listening to naturalistic spoken English, covering nearly the full Sherlock Holmes canon. Designed to support advances in neural decoding, LibriBrain comes with a Python library for streamlined integration with deep learning frameworks, standard data splits for reproducibility, and baseline results for three foundational decoding tasks: speech detection, phoneme classification, and word classification. Baseline experiments demonstrate that increasing training data yields substantial improvements in decoding performance, highlighting the value of scaling up deep, within-subject datasets. By releasing this dataset, we aim to empower the research community to advance speech decoding methodologies and accelerate the development of safe, effective clinical brain-computer interfaces.


Learning When to Think: Shaping Adaptive Reasoning in R1-Style Models via Multi-Stage RL

Neural Information Processing Systems

Large reasoning models (LRMs) are proficient at generating explicit, step-by-step reasoning sequences before producing final answers. However, such detailed reasoning can introduce substantial computational overhead and latency, particularly for simple problems. To address this overthinking problem, we explore how to equip LRMs with adaptive thinking capabilities, enabling them to dynamically decide whether to engage in explicit reasoning based on problem complexity. Building on R1-style distilled models, we observe that inserting a simple ellipsis ("...") into the prompt can stochastically trigger either a thinking or no-thinking mode, revealing a latent controllability in the reasoning behavior. Leveraging this property, we propose AutoThink, a multi-stage reinforcement learning (RL) framework that progressively optimizes reasoning policies via stage-wise reward shaping. AutoThink learns to invoke explicit reasoning only when necessary, while defaulting to succinct responses for simpler tasks. Experiments on five mainstream mathematical benchmarks demonstrate that AutoThink achieves favorable accuracy-efficiency trade-offs compared to recent prompting and RL-based pruning methods. It can be seamlessly integrated into any R1-style model, including both distilled and further fine-tuned variants. Notably, AutoThink improves relative accuracy by 6.4% while reducing token usage by 52% on DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen-1.5B, establishing a scalable and adaptive reasoning paradigm for LRMs.