Cathy Wu

I am happy to announce that for the first time my group is participating in the MIT-UF-NEU 2026 Joint Summer Research Camp. Applications are open until April 17. More info in thread and here: www.wucathy.com/prospective/

Interviews will be held from April 18 to 30, and the program will run from late May to early September. More information and application can be found here, including mentors and specific research topic areas from my group: www.wucathy.com/prospective/

I am happy to announce that for the first time my group is participating in the MIT-UF-NEU 2026 Joint Summer Research Camp. Applications are open until April 17. More info in thread and here: www.wucathy.com/prospective/

This summer program brings together faculty and mentors across MIT, UF, and Northeastern to support students interested in transportation, urban planning, machine learning, generative AI, and optimization for complex systems. The program will be held online and is completely free of charge.

If pure AI or pure search isn't working for you, consider learning-guided optimization! This approach combines the best of both worlds; our most recent work demonstrates this for coordinating agents in warehouse robotics.

MIT News: news.mit.edu/2026/ai-syst... Paper (JAIR): jair.org/index.php/ja... Code: github.com/MikeZheng777...

If pure AI or pure search isn't working for you, consider learning-guided optimization! This approach combines the best of both worlds; our most recent work demonstrates this for coordinating agents in warehouse robotics.

What's an energy-efficient way to shovel snow? Introducing eco-shoveling*, a two-stage technique to handle snow accumulation, while conserving energy in preparation for more shoveling later... Built to withstand three winter storms.

Did something happen to the “my bangers” feed of your top bluesky posts? Is there an alternative?

Have you noticed how navigation apps include walking & waiting for public transit, but excludes parking & walking for driving? After being late a few times 😅, we finally did. We got curious: what if these apps account for parking?

Our resulting paper, Probability-Aware Parking Selection, shows that doing so can improve travel time estimates, save drivers time by routing them to parking, and make for fairer comparisons across transportation modes! And this work is featured today on the MIT Home Page!

📣 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝘆 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗽! I’m looking to hire 𝟭–𝟮 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰𝘀 to work with us across the group’s research areas, including: 🤖 Deep reinforcement learning 🚦 Traffic modeling & control 🧠 Neural combinatorial optimization

Join us in our mission to use 𝗔𝗜/𝗠𝗟 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀 and to enable 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿, 𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹-𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀. 🗓️ Applications are reviewed 𝗼𝗻 𝗮 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗶𝘀, starting immediately. 🔗 Details + how to apply: cathywu.github.io/prospective

🔥 New workshop at @neuripsconf.bsky.social! DiffCoALG bridges the gap between classic algorithms & differentiable learning. Think: LLM reasoning, routing, SAT, MIP — neurally optimized. 📌 Submit by Aug 22! 🤖🧠 🔗 sites.google.com/view/diffcoa... #NeurIPS2025

This project was 4 years in the making and it's finally out! We found that controlling vehicle speeds to mitigate traffic across a city can cut carbon emissions between 11 and 22 percent. To do this, we used deep reinforcement learning to optimize one million eco-driving scenarios. 🚗🤖🧠

Website: vindulamj.github.io/eco-drive/ Published paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Pre-print: arxiv.org/abs/2408.05609

This project was 4 years in the making and it's finally out! We found that controlling vehicle speeds to mitigate traffic across a city can cut carbon emissions between 11 and 22 percent. To do this, we used deep reinforcement learning to optimize one million eco-driving scenarios. 🚗🤖🧠

I’m incredibly happy to have found metascience bluesky. Science is messy and beautiful, and there is a group of people thinking hard about how and why.