Related papers: Introduction to discoverology
Exploring the Universe is one of the great unifying themes of humanity. Part of this endeavour is the search for extraterrestrial life. But how likely is it that we will find life, or that if we do it will be similar to ourselves? And…
Despite persistent efforts to understand the dynamics of creativity of scientists over careers in terms of productivity, impact, and prize, little is known about the dynamics of scientists' disruptive efforts that affect individual academic…
Learning complex robot behavior through interactions with the environment necessitates principled exploration. Effective strategies should prioritize exploring regions of the state-action space that maximize rewards, with optimistic…
It has been hypothesized that one of the main reasons evolution has been able to produce such impressive adaptations is because it has improved its own ability to evolve -- "the evolution of evolvability". Rupert Riedl, for example, an…
This position paper argues that machine learning for scientific discovery should shift from inductive pattern recognition to axiom-based reasoning. We propose a game design framework in which scientific inquiry is recast as a rule-evolving…
Discovering novel catalysts requires complex reasoning involving multiple chemical properties and resultant trade-offs, leading to a combinatorial growth in the search space. While large language models (LLM) have demonstrated novel…
In this contribution to the proceedings of the 182nd Nobel Symposium, I reflect on the concept of "discovery" as it is used by physicists and astronomers. In particular, I comment on how the scientific community distinguishes discoveries…
Evolvability is the capacity to evolve. This paper introduces a simple computational model of evolvability and demonstrates that, under certain conditions, evolvability can increase indefinitely, even when there is no direct selection for…
Progress in science and technology is punctuated by disruptive innovation and breakthroughs. Researchers have characterized these disruptions to explore the factors that spark such innovations and to assess their long-term trends. However,…
How best to incentivise prompt disclosure? We study this question in a general model in which a technological breakthrough occurs at an uncertain time and is privately observed by an agent, and a principal must incentivise disclosure via…
Process discovery aims to discover descriptive process models from event logs. These discovered process models depict the actual execution of a process and serve as a foundational element for conformance checking, performance analyses, and…
Typical models of learning assume incremental estimation of continuously-varying decision variables like expected rewards. However, this class of models fails to capture more idiosyncratic, discrete heuristics and strategies that people and…
Being aware of the motivation problems observed in many scientific oriented careers, we present two experiences to expose to college students to environments, methodologies and discovery techniques addressing contemporary problems. This…
The study of exploration in the domain of decision making has a long history but remains actively debated. From the vast literature that addressed this topic for decades under various points of view (e.g., developmental psychology,…
Exploration is a difficult challenge in reinforcement learning and even recent state-of-the art curiosity-based methods rely on the simple epsilon-greedy strategy to generate novelty. We argue that pure random walks do not succeed to…
Immersion in a creative task can be an intimate experience. It can feel like a mystery: intangible, inexplicable, and beyond the reach of science. However, science is making exciting headway into understanding creativity. While the mind of…
Student and public understanding of new discoveries in particle physics are enhanced by preparatory activities. Such activities give the user experience and context to understand a representation of the data associated with the discovery…
This article outlines a comprehensive redesign of an introductory physics laboratory course aimed at promoting active student engagement, enhancing scientific experimental skills and the development of expert-like attitudes. The redesign…
Although exploratory behaviors are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, their computational underpinnings are still largely unknown. Behavioral Psychology has identified learning as a primary drive underlying many exploratory behaviors.…
Scientific discovery increasingly depends on efficient experimental optimization to navigate vast design spaces under time and resource constraints. Traditional approaches often require extensive domain expertise and feature engineering.…