ENS – PSL
Master IASD · Autumn 2026

DataLab

Université Paris Dauphine – PSL / ENS – PSL
Alexandre Vérine · Contact · Personal website

News & feedback · 15 October

Registration sheet: almost complete

Thank you for filling in the sheet. If you have not done so yet, please complete your name and email next to your GitHub ID.

Feedback on the first presentations

The first A1 presentations went well. A few reminders for the next groups:

  • Prepare your slides in 16:9 widescreen format.
  • Focus on one method and explain it well, rather than covering too many methods.
  • Adapt the number of slides to a 5-minute talk. The alarm marks the end of your presentation.
  • Speak loudly enough for the whole room to hear you.

A1 movie metadata: corrected file

The original namesngenre.npy had an indexing mismatch between movie titles/genres and rating columns. Please use namesngenre2.npy instead and update the filename in your code. The updated A1 ZIP includes this correction. The rating matrices and train/test/eval splits are unchanged. Please rerun any analysis or method that used movie metadata.

Some MovieLens titles occur under multiple IDs. Compare movies by movieId, not by title. The companion movie_ids.npy gives the original ID for each rating column and metadata row. All 4,980 columns have been checked against the original ratings.

The course

Work in groups of three on collaborative filtering, generative models and adversarial robustness. For each project, implement an approach, compare it against baselines, and explain what your experiments teach you in a short talk and a report.

Registration & groups — action required

Your TODO

Assessment & submissions

  • One presentation per group, per project. A1 and A2: preliminary or final. A3: final only, for everyone. A1/A2 provisional allocation: 19 groups in preliminary and 18 in final. Each presentation lasts 5 minutes. An alarm rings at 5 minutes: finish your talk when it rings. A further 2 minutes per group are reserved for questions and transition. A3 timing will be announced separately.
  • One final report per project: one group cover page + at most five pages of content. Optional appendices are not read.
  • Code itself is not graded. Your report and talk must explain your methods, experimental protocol, results and limitations. The required code interface must work for automated tests.
  • AI is allowed. You must understand, verify and be able to defend everything you submit. Interpret results rather than simply describing them. Expectations increase from A1 to A3.

Files and deadlines

Push slides.pdf and report.pdf to the root of your group repository. Slides are due at 23:59 the day before your presentation; the final report is due at 23:59 the day before the final session, for all groups. Code can be updated until 05:00 on the final-session day. All times are Paris time.

Submission deadlines · 2026
Project Preliminary slides Final slides & report Final code
A1 14 Oct · 23:59 21 Oct · 23:59 22 Oct · 05:00
A2 4 Nov · 23:59 11 Nov · 23:59 12 Nov · 05:00
A3 — 2 Dec · 23:59 3 Dec · 05:00

Late submissions will not be accepted. Missing or incorrectly named files will be penalised. Check your pushed PDFs on GitHub before the deadline.

Daily testing

Your repository is pulled and tested each morning around 05:00. Results appear after the runs finish. The DataLab results links will be announced below. These tests provide feedback for your experiments.

Schedule

A1: 40 active groups · allocation updated on 15 October. Each presentation lasts 5 minutes, with an alarm at 5 minutes, followed by 2 minutes for questions and transition. Preliminary: 22 groups · 154 minutes (2 h 34). Final: 18 groups · 126 minutes (2 h 06). Group lists and presentation dates are below.

Sessions generally last three hours. The A1 preliminary session on 15 October uses an extended presentation window of 2 h 34. On 22 October, the last 40 minutes are reserved for the introduction to A2 and precision–recall. A2 group allocation remains provisional.

Autumn 2026 · provisional programme
Date Session
Thu 1 Oct DataLab introduction + A1
Thu 8 Oct Slurm introduction + technical support
Thu 15 Oct A1 preliminary presentations
Thu 22 Oct A1 final presentations + A2 / precision–recall introduction
Thu 29 Oct No class
Thu 5 Nov A2 preliminary presentations
Thu 12 Nov A2 final presentations + A3 introduction
Fri 13 Nov Guest lecture: Lucas
Thu 19 Nov No class
Wed 25 Nov No class
Thu 3 Dec A3 final presentations — all groups
Project 01 · Open

Collaborative filtering

Predict missing ratings using matrix factorisation and alternative recommendation methods. Compare approaches and study hyperparameters, regularisation and computational cost.

Why can local and platform scores differ? Locally, fit on train and measure on test. The platform gives your method train + test and measures predictions on a separate, hidden eval set. Load the input supplied through --name.

Preliminary · Thursday 15 October

A1 preliminary presentation order · 15 October

22 groups · 5 minutes of presentation per group. An alarm rings at 5 minutes. Allow a further 2 minutes for questions and transition.

Upload slides.pdf by 14 October at 23:59.

Groups · alphabetical list

  • 1p2v
  • ACA
  • AcceleratedAerodynamicsYaris
  • AKE
  • Antoine
  • BANs
  • Blocus
  • blue
  • Gengis GAN
  • Group
  • Group 28
  • Group 4
  • Group 7
  • HBA
  • La piscine
  • Le Groupe
  • Le groupe du fond : LiS
  • MassSurveillanceReadyFiltering
  • ocaml
  • OT dream team
  • rEcommeNderS
  • WorksOnMyMachine

Final · Thursday 22 October

A1 final presentation order · 22 October

18 groups · 5 minutes of presentation per group. An alarm rings at 5 minutes. Allow a further 2 minutes for questions and transition.

Upload slides.pdf by 21 October at 23:59.

Groups · alphabetical list

  • altf4
  • Breaking Bias
  • Cold Start Club
  • data-doodlers
  • DauDau
  • force-push
  • Group 13
  • Group 16
  • Group 31
  • Group 37
  • LHOOQ
  • ONN
  • Rejoignez@Alexis@Hadrien
  • SnapCat
  • The Outliers
  • TinderCEOs
  • umap reborn
  • UsualGreenSundayEnjoyer

The three volunteer groups are included in the preliminary session. The remaining preliminary groups were drawn at random. These alphabetical lists indicate your presentation date, not your speaking order. The preliminary running order remains available for reference. The final presentation order is now available above. Please be ready from the start of your session.

All groups: upload report.pdf by 21 October at 23:59, including groups presenting on 15 October. Code remains modifiable until 22 October at 05:00.

Check the latest assignments on the Find your A1 group page. Contact Alexandre if your group is missing or incorrect.

Project 02 · Starts 22 October

Generative models

A2 groups: no repeated pairs

No two students who were in the same A1 group may be in the same A2 group. Every pair in your A2 group must be new. For example, if A, B and C worked together in A1, they must join three different A2 groups.

Study generation quality and diversity through precision and recall. Design controlled comparisons and explain the trade-offs you observe.

Train the MNIST GAN with the provided generator architecture kept fixed. The platform measures FID, precision and recall and displays generated-image galleries.

Preliminary · 5 November

5 minutes of presentation per group. An alarm rings at 5 minutes. A further 2 minutes are reserved for questions and transition.

Group names and running order: to be announced.

Final · 12 November

5 minutes of presentation per group. An alarm rings at 5 minutes. A further 2 minutes are reserved for questions and transition.

Group names and running order: to be announced.

Request a preliminary presentation

Email Alexandre with your group name, members and repository link by the end of Thursday 22 October if you would like to present in preliminary. On Saturday 31 October, the remaining presentation dates will be assigned randomly and the remaining students will be assigned to groups. The confirmed allocation will be published here.

Project 03 · Starts 12 November

Adversarial robustness

Understand adversarial attacks and assess the robustness of classifiers. Support your conclusions with careful experiments and critical analysis.

Slides, Classroom 50 invitation and testing platform: coming soon.

Final presentations · 3 December

All groups present in the final session. There is no preliminary session for A3.

With 37 groups, five-minute talks plus two minutes for questions and transition would require 4 h 19. The A3 presentation format will be announced separately.

Group list, order and speaking times: to be announced.

MesoNET & Slurm

Prepare your account before the practical introduction on 8 October.

MesoNET update · 7 October: I have recorded the emails I have processed and the accounts I could add to the IASD project in the MesoNET access follow-up sheet. Students whose profiles were complete could be added. Please check your status and complete your MesoNET profile if needed. A processed email does not by itself confirm project access: check whether your account has been added.
  1. Request an account through the MesoNET account procedure, using eduGAIN and your institutional account. Mention IASD.
  2. Validate your email, wait for approval, then complete your MesoNET profile before emailing Alexandre.
  3. Email Alexandre with your name, MesoNET username and registration email to request access to the IASD project.
  4. Prepare your SSH public key. The course introduction contains the SSH setup instructions.

The example includes Python code, configurations, Slurm scripts, the interactive analysis notebook, recorded results and the two trained best.pt models. Start with README.md. You can explore the prepared results without retraining. Download CIFAR-10 separately to train; the larger resume checkpoints and environments are not included.