Le Bras, Ronan

Ronan Le Bras is a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI. His research interests include generative AI and its evaluation, commonsense reasoning through natural language understanding, as well as computational methods for large-scale combinatorial optimization, reasoning, machine learning and human computation. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University in 2016. Prior to that, he earned an M.S. and a B.S. from Ecole Polytechnique Montreal in Computer Engineering and in Software Engineering.

Positions

  • Now 2020

    Senior Research Scientist

    Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

  • 2020 2016

    Research Scientist

    Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Education

  • Ph.D. 2016

    Ph.D. in Computer Science, Cornell University

    Thesis: Leveraging Human Insights into Problem Structure for Scientific Discovery

  • M.S. 2009

    M.S. in Computer Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Montreal

    Thesis: Applying Probabilistic Message-Passing Algorithms to Search Heuristics for Solving Constraint Satisfaction Problems. *Nominated for the best 2010 University Master’s Thesis*

  • B.Eng. 2008

    B.Eng. in Software Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Montreal

    *Degree with highest honors*

  • C.P.G.E. 2004

    C.P.G.E. in Mathematics and Physics, Lycee Montaigne, Bordeaux

    MPSI (Mathematics, Physics, and Engineering Science), MP* (Mathematics and Physics)

Honors and Awards

  • 2024
    trophy TMLR Finalist for Outstanding Certification
    Finalist for Outstanding Certification (2 awardees and 3 finalists) in 2024 in the Transactions on Machine Learning Research (TMLR) journal for the collaborative benchmark paper entitled Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and extrapolating the capabilities of language models
  • 2023
    trophy EMNLP Outstanding Paper Award
    Outstanding Paper Award (26 out of 1,047 accepted papers) at EMNLP'23 for our paper entitled SODA: Million-scale Dialogue Distillation with Social Commonsense Contextualization
  • 2023
    trophy ACL Outstanding Paper Award
    Outstanding Paper Award (39 out of 1,074 accepted papers) at ACL'23 for our paper entitled NLPositionality: Characterizing Design Biases of Datasets and Models
  • 2022
    trophy NAACL Best Paper Award
    Best New Method Paper Award (1 out of 442 accepted papers) at NAACL'22 for our paper entitled NeuroLogic A*esque Decoding: Constrained Text Generation with Lookahead Heuristics
  • 2020
    trophy AAAI Outstanding Paper Award
    Outstanding Paper Award (1 out of 1,591 accepted papers) at AAAI'20 for our paper entitled WinoGrande: An Adversarial Winograd Schema Challenge at Scale
  • 2017
    trophy IAAI Innovative Application Paper Award
    Innovative Application Paper Award at IAAI'17 for our paper entitled Phase-mapper: An AI platform to accelerate high throughput materials discovery
  • 2013
    trophy VLDB Best Paper Award
    VLDBJ Invitation for the Special Issue on Best Papers of VLDB 2013 for our paper entitled Cloudia: a deployment advisor for public clouds
  • 2010
    graduation Teaching Award of Excellence
    Award of Teaching Excellence as Teaching Assistant for the course Foundations of Artificial Intelligence, Cornell University
  • 2009-10
    scholarship Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship
    Scholarship for Doctorate Studies awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
  • 2010
    graduation Nominated for the best 2010 University Master’s Thesis
    Master of Science in Computer Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Montreal
  • 2009-10
    scholarship FQRNT Masters Research Scholarship
    Scholarship for Masters Studies awarded by the Fonds Quebecois de la recherche sur la nature et les technologies (FQRNT)
  • 2009
    scholarship J.A. Deseve Foundation Scholarship
    Scholarship awarded based on Academic Excellence by the J.A. Deseve Foundation
  • 2008-09
    scholarship CIRRELT Scholarship for Excellence in Master’s program
    Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT)
  • 2008
    graduation Bachelor Degree with Highest Honors
    Bachelor of Engineering in Software Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Montreal
  • 2004
    scholarship Rotary Foundation Scholarship for Excellence
    Rotary International, The Rotary Foundation

Professional Service

  • PC Member

    AAAI 2011/2017-2021

    CPAIOR 2013

    EMNLP 2023

    IJCAI 2013/2015

    NAACL 2024

  • Reviewer

    AAAI 2010/2011/2013-2015/2017-2022

    Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence

    CP 2010/2011/2016

    CPAIOR 2012-2014

    EMNLP 2020/2022

    ICLR 2025

    IJCAI 2013/2015/2020

    INFORMS Journal of Computing

    ITCAI 2010

    Journal of Combinatorial Designs

    Journal of Machine Learning Research

    NAACL/NeuralGen 2019

    NAACL/SemEval 2019

    Nature

    SAT 2013

    SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics (SIDMA)

    SoCS 2013/2014

Teaching Experience

  • Spring 2016

    Teaching Assistant, Cornell University

    Head TA for the course Introduction to Analysis of Algorithms

  • Spring 2013

    Guest Lecturer, Cornell University

    Graduate course, Topics in Computational Sustainability

  • Fall 2010

    Teaching Assistant, Cornell University

    Artificial Intelligence, *TA Award of Excellence*

  • Jan-Dec 2007

    Teaching Assistant, HEC Montreal

    Probability and Statistics

  • Jan-Dec 2007

    Teaching Assistant, Ecole Polytechnique Montreal,

    Computer Architecture and Programming Language