Can Pouliquen

Ph.D. student in Machine Learning

Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon

can.pouliquen \AT\ ens-lyon \DOT\ fr

Last update: Feb. 2025

Quick bio

Hello, I am a 3rd year PhD student in machine learning at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon under the supervision of Mathurin Massias, Titouan Vayer and Paulo Gonçalves. I am a part of OCKHAM, a joint team of Inria¹ and CNRS², led by Rémi Gribonval.

Previously, I was a research intern in deep learning in NeuroAI, a CNRS lab in Toulouse³, under the supervision of Andrea Alamia and Rufin VanRullen.

Before that, we may have met in Berlin, Montpellier, Lyon, Istanbul, Beyrouth, Amman or Cairo. Hit me up if that's the case !

Outside of research, I enjoy hiking, running, food, beers, and "la belle vie" with my girlfriend⁴.

French national institute of research in informatics and applied mathematics
French national center of scientific research
The "pink city" in beautiful South-West, France
The picture above is us on top of the Mt. Chaberton, France

Research

I work on machine learning methods for structure discovery (i.e. learning to unveil hidden graphical structures in data). Currently, I am trying to bridge the gap between optimization-based approaches and deep learning-based approaches to do so.

Here is a list of links to my publications:

Schur's Positive-Definite Network: Deep Learning in the SPD cone with structure.
Can Pouliquen, Mathurin Massias, Titouan Vayer
ICLR, 2025.

Implicit differentiation for hyperparameter tuning the weighted Graphical Lasso.
Can Pouliquen, Paulo Gonçalves, Mathurin Massias, Titouan Vayer
GRETSI, 2023.

Can sparsity improve the privacy of neural networks ?
Antoine Gonon, Léon Zheng, Clément Lalanne, Quoc-Tung Le, Guillaume Lauga, Can Pouliquen
GRETSI, 2023.

Teaching

ENS de Lyon: Convex optimization M1 (2023-2024)
TA of Mathurin Massias, 12h

CPE Lyon: Optimization algorithms M1 (2023-2024)
TA of Marion Foare, 20h

Ecole Centrale de Lyon: Probability theory L3 (2023-2024)
TA of Céline Helbert and Christophette Blanchet, 32h

Talks

Deep Learning in the SPD cone with structure.
Several poster and oral presentations.

Machine Learning, Optimization, and interactions.
Scientific outreach for an audience of high-school students, June 2024.

Implicit differentiation for hyperparameter tuning the weighted Graphical Lasso.
GRETSI oral, August 2023.

Neuroscience inspired machine learning.
OCKHAM seminar, June 2023.

Estimating dynamic functional connectivity graphs.
LIP PhD seminar, May 2023.

Contact

To get in touch:

Email: can.pouliquen \AT\ ens-lyon \DOT\ fr
Office: ENS Lyon, site Monod, 46 allée d'Italie, 69007, Lyon, France