UBC Computer Science

We’re just one week away from Spring 2026 graduation at UBC Vancouver. 🎓 From May 20–28, our community comes together to celebrate your hard work, determination and achievement. Tuum Est. It is Yours. Mark the moment by tagging us or sharing your experience with #UBCGrad. Find everything you need to know about graduation: bit.ly/4pjfYo0

Over the Easter long weekend, UBC youCode, a student-run, 24-hour hackathon, brought together many first-time hackers to design tech that uplifts underrepresented groups. Read more: cs.ubc.ca/news/2026/05/y…

Dr. @AlanMackworth has been studying AI since the 1970s. In this conversation the UBC Computer Science professor emeritus discusses the challenges of regulating AI, if age-based bans make sense and how chatbots are trained to flag harmful actors. @UBC_CS @ubcscience/can-canada-constrain-ai-aba6d4acd8a3" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">medium.com/@ubcscience/ca…

We are excited to host Kathleen Fraser from the University of Ottawa for a talk on “Bias and safety in large vision-language models”. We look forward to seeing you there! 📅 Fri, May 29 🕙 10:00 AM 📍ICICS 246 @UBC_CS @CAIDA_UBC @UBCLangScis

Pleased to see such strong engagement at the inaugural BC AI Research-to-Adoption Summit, co-hosted by Simon Fraser University and The University of British Columbia. Looking forward to the continued collaborations and conversations sparked throughout the summit.

AI Is Starting to Build Better AI. My latest for @IEEESpectrum, on recursive self-improvement (RSI). Link in reply. Thanks, @annadgoldie, @Azaliamirh, @RicursiveAI, @matejbalog, @GoogleDeepMind, @jeffclune, @DavidSKrueger, @deanwball. Also mentioned: @natolambert, @jaseweston, @j_foerst, @OpenAI, @AnthropicAI, @SakanaAILabs, @UBC.

UBC computer scientist Dr. Dongwook Yoon (@dw__yoon) explains why some people get hooked on relationships with their AI chatbots on @CTVNews. @UBC_CS ctvnews.ca/vancouver/vide…

✨ I’m on the faculty/postdoc job market! ✨ I’m a PhD Candidate in @UBC_CS, advised by Prof. @Karonmaclean, defending in May 2026. 🌿 I build and study affective haptic technologies that help people regulate emotions. Learn more about my work here: cs.ubc.ca/~pv

I was on CBC's Quirks and Quarks this weekend discussing "AI 'scientists': the promise, the peril and the future of science with superintelligence". ~20 minute interview allowed us to cover a lot of ground. PS. Love the name of this show! cbc.ca/player/play/au…

With comments by yours truly forbes.com/sites/johndrak…

Congratulations to PhD student Jeffrey Niu on receiving the UBC Killam Graduate Teaching Assistant Award! Jeffrey is one of 19 graduate students across the university awarded this year. Read more in our article: cs.ubc.ca/news/2026/04/j…

AI chatbots feel helpful—and sometimes irresistible. New UBC research explores how design features may be fuelling addictive use, with impacts on work, relationships and well-being. Read more ⤵️ news.ubc.ca/2026/04/are-yo…

Nice article on world models that I provided commentary for. nature.com/articles/d4158…

Excited to share that ALMA wins outstanding paper award at ICLR RSI workshop! Thanks very much to the organizers. Congrats to @yimingxiong_ for the great work!

“Some users don’t know that AI chatbots are not real because they’re so convincing,” said UBC computer scientist Karen Shen. “If chatbots start replacing sleep, relationships or daily routines, that’s a sign to check in with ... someone you trust.” @UBC_CS science.ubc.ca/news/2026-04/a…

Wow. Packed room! Lots of interest in AI-generating algorithms and recursive self-improvement! Thanks to the organizers of this nice workshop!

I will be attending ICLR 2026 in Brazil 🇧🇷! I will be presenting two papers: Darwin Gödel Machine: Open-Ended Evolution of Self-Improving Agents - Main conference poster — Sat Apr 25, 10:30 AM – 1:00 PM (-03), Pavilion 3, P3-#1719 Learning to Continually Learn via Meta-learning Agentic Memory Designs - RSI Workshop oral presentation — Sun Apr 26, 15:20, Room 101-D - MemAgent Workshop oral presentation — Mon Apr 27, 13:45, Room 205 Feel free to reach out if you'd like to chat! 🧵

A new study from UBC Computer Science explores people's experiences of writing messages but never sending them — and how the design of the writing platform can change how people manage or express their emotions. Read the paper here: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/37…

What happens when differentiable simulation meets diffusion models? You get a foundation model that is both 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 AND 𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝗯𝗲𝘆 𝗽𝗵𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀. 📢 Excited to share our latest work accepted to #ICLR2026: "Physically Valid Biomolecular Interaction Modeling with Gauss-Seidel Projection." 🧬 Foundation models like AlphaFold3 and Boltz have transformed biomolecular structure prediction — yet they still hallucinate physically invalid structures: steric clashes, distorted covalent geometry, broken stereochemistry. The root cause? Current predictors are trained to match empirical distributions — they never enforce physical validity as a 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁. The secret sauce? A 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗚𝗮𝘂𝘀𝘀-𝗦𝗲𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗲 that takes provisional atom coordinates from the diffusion model and projects them onto the nearest physically valid configuration. By exploiting the locality and sparsity of atomic constraints, it converges stably and fast at scale. The module plugs into existing frameworks end-to-end via implicit differentiation — treating physical validity as a first-class citizen during 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. With our projection module in place, just 𝟮 𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗼𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽𝘀 suffice to match the structural accuracy of 200-step diffusion baselines — delivering a ~𝟭𝟬× 𝘄𝗮𝗹𝗹-𝗰𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗸 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘂𝗽 while guaranteeing physical validity. Across six benchmarks (CASP15, PoseBusters, AF3-AB, dsDNA, RNA-Protein, and more), our model closes the gap between guaranteed physical validity and state-of-the-art structural accuracy. Joint work across UBC, MIT, NVIDIA, PKU, U of Utah, and Foundry Biosciences. 📄 Project: chensiyuan030105.github.io/ProteinGS/ 💻 Code: github.com/chensiyuan0301…

I really like this interview. It covers a lot of interesting questions about The AI scientist: why we should do it, that AI can be creative, and that AI Scientists could fix some of the problems in science like the replication crisis. newstalk.com/podcasts/futur…