Singapore

Monte Carlo random walk methods are widely used in capacitance extraction for their mesh-free formulation and inherent parallelism. However, modern semiconductor technologies with densely packed structures present significant challenges in unbiasedly sampling transition domains in walk steps with multiple high-contrast dielectric materials. We present DeepRWCap, a machine learning-guided random walk solver that predicts the transition quantities required to guide each step of the walk. These include Poisson kernels, gradient kernels, signs and magnitudes of weight. DeepRWCap employs a two-stage neural architecture that decomposes structured outputs into face-wise distributions and spatial kernels on cube faces. It uses 3D convolutional networks to capture volumetric dielectric interactions and 2D depthwise separable convolutions to model localized kernel behavior. The design incorporates grid-based positional encodings and structural design choices informed by cube symmetries to reduce learning redundancy and improve generalization. Trained on 100,000 procedurally generated dielectric configurations, DeepRWCap achieves a mean relative error of $1.24\pm0.53$\% when benchmarked against the commercial Raphael solver on the self-capacitance estimation of 10 industrial designs spanning 12 to 55 nm nodes. Compared to the state-of-the-art stochastic difference method Microwalk, DeepRWCap achieves an average 23\% speedup. On complex designs with runtimes over 10s, it reaches an average 49\% acceleration.

AAAI 2026

DeepRWCap: Neural-Guided Random-Walk Capacitance Solver for IC Design

deep learning algorithms sampling/simulation-based search hardware-aware ml

**BQIT is a three day annual workshop** aimed at enabling leading UK and international academics and industrial partners to come together; to explore and discuss future ambitions and challenges in the field of **Quantum Information Technologies.** Since our conception in 2014 we have had 230 speakers and panellists who have presented their work and opinions on a range of topics, from quantum theory to innovation in industry.


### Welcome Message
The BQIT:21 team welcomes you to the eighth Bristol Quantum Information Technologies workshop! 

Last year was the first time in our workshop's history that we had gone fully virtual. The global circumstances that continue to impact us all professionally and personally have forced BQIT once again to be delivered as an all-virtual workshop for 2021. The access this creates to colleagues across the world who would otherwise be unable to join us, as well as being able to make the workshop free for all attendees due to the lower costs involved in delivering an online workshop, are just a couple of the extraordinary benefits of meeting online. This also means that we can welcome three times as many attendees to BQIT than previous years.   

We take this opportunity to thank each of our speakers and poster presenters for contributing their technical content, this year's sponsors, whose support this year enabled BQIT:21 to be free to all attendees, and to all of our attendees for joining us online this year. We recognise the extra energy required to stay connected and motivated during these difficult times, and are hugely encouraged to see so many of you willing to continue to connect with us on an online platform. 

It is our hope that you have a productive and enjoyable time while you engage and interact with BQIT:21, and to everyone that has helped take BQIT:21 online, thank you! 

**The BQIT board and organisation team **


![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/a12e0c1ad3410144cb48557690e4ecaf.png)
### This year's workshop agenda is available here: [Virtual BQIT:21](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QwsSM0ztnxC_lgUKf3TbO3GvnI44AQkY/view?usp=sharing)
For further information, please contact us at: **bqit-admin@bristol.ac.uk**

![](https://assets.underline.io/uploads/markdown_image/1/image/a12e0c1ad3410144cb48557690e4ecaf.png)

Bristol Quantum Information Technologies Workshop

poster

We are pleased to announce the Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26), which will be held in Singapore EXPO from January 20 to January 27, 2026.

The purpose of the AAAI conference series is to promote research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and foster scientific exchange between researchers, practitioners, scientists, students, and engineers across the entirety of AI and its affiliated disciplines. AAAI-26 will feature technical paper presentations, special tracks, invited speakers, workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, senior member presentations, competitions, and exhibit programs, and a range of other activities to be announced.<br><br>

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We are pleased to announce the Fortieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26), which will be held in Singapore EXPO from January 20 to January 27, 2026.

RGB-T Salient Object Detection (SOD) aims to accurately localize and segment the most salient objects in images using RGB and thermal modalities. However, existing methods predominantly rely on manually aligned and annotated datasets, struggling to handle real-world scenarios with raw, unaligned RGB-T image pairs. In practical applications, due to significant cross-modal disparities such as spatial misalignment, scale variations, and viewpoint shifts, the performance of current methods drastically deteriorates on unaligned datasets. To address this issue, we propose an efficient RGB-T SOD method for real-world unaligned image pairs, termed Thin-Plate Spline-driven Semantic Correlation Learning Network (TPS-SCL). We employ a dual-stream MobileViT as the encoder, combined with efficient Mamba scanning mechanisms, to effectively model correlations between the two modalities while maintaining low parameter counts and computational overhead. To suppress interference from redundant background information during alignment, we design a Semantic Correlation Constraint Module (SCCM) to hierarchically constrain salient features. Furthermore, we introduce a Thin-Plate Spline Alignment Module (TPSAM) to mitigate spatial discrepancies between modalities. Additionally, a Cross-Modal Correlation Module (CMCM) is incorporated to fully explore and integrate inter-modal dependencies, enhancing detection performance. TPS-SCL achieves remarkable efficiency with only 12.84M parameters and 12.34G FLOPs. Extensive experiments on unaligned, weakly aligned, and aligned datasets demonstrate that TPS-SCL attains state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance among existing lightweight SOD methods and outperforms mainstream RGB-T SOD approaches.

Breaking Alignment Barriers: TPS-Driven Semantic Correlation Learning for Alignment-Free RGB-T Salient Object Detection

Video Large Language Models (Video LLMs) have achieved significant success by adopting the paradigm of large-scale pre-training followed by supervised fine-tuning (SFT). 
However, existing approaches struggle with temporal reasoning due to **weak temporal correspondence in the data** and **over-reliance on the next-token prediction paradigm**, which collectively result in the absence temporal supervision. 
To address these limitations, we propose **TEMPLE (TEMporal Preference Learning)**, a systematic framework that enhances temporal reasoning capabilities through Direct Preference Optimization (DPO). 
To address temporal information scarcity in data, we introduce an automated pipeline for systematically constructing temporality-intensive preference pairs comprising three steps: selecting temporally rich videos, designing video-specific perturbation strategies, and evaluating model responses on clean and perturbed inputs. 
Complementing this data pipeline, we provide additional supervision signals via preference learning and propose a novel Progressive Pre-SFT Alignment strategy featuring two key innovations: a curriculum learning strategy which progressively increases perturbation difficulty to maximize data efficiency; and applying preference optimization before instruction tuning to incentivize fundamental temporal alignment.
Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach consistently improves Video LLM performance across multiple benchmarks with a relatively small set of self-generated DPO data. 
Our findings highlight TEMPLE as a scalable and efficient complement to SFT-based methods, paving the way for developing reliable Video LLMs.

TEMPLE: Incentivizing Temporal Understanding of Video Large Language Models via Progressive Pre-SFT Alignment

Robust object detection for challenging scenarios increasingly relies on event cameras, yet existing Event-RGB datasets remain constrained by sparse coverage of extreme conditions and low spatial resolution ($\leq 640 \times 480$ ), which prevents comprehensive evaluation of detectors under challenging scenarios. To address these limitations, we propose PEOD, the first large-scale, pixel-aligned and hign-resolution ($1280 \times 720$) Event-RGB dataset for object detection under challenge conditions. PEOD contains 130+ spatiotemporal-aligned sequences and 340k manual bounding boxes, with 57\% of data captured under low-light, overexposure, and high-speed motion. Furthermore, we benchmark 14 methods across three input configurations (Event-based, RGB-based, and Event-RGB fusion) on PEOD. On the full test set and normal subset, fusion-based models achieve the excellent performance. However, in illumination challenge subset, the top event-based model outperforms all fusion models, while fusion models still outperform their RGB-based counterparts, indicating limits of existing fusion methods when the frame modality is severely degraded. PEOD establishes a realistic, high-quality benchmark for multimodal perception and will be publicly released later to facilitate future research.

PEOD: A Pixel-Aligned Event-RGB Benchmark for Object Detection Under Challenging Conditions

Accurate and efficient simulations of physical phenomena governed by partial differential equations (PDEs) are important for scientific and engineering progress. While traditional numerical solvers are powerful, they are often computationally expensive. Recently, data-driven methods have emerged as alternatives, but they frequently suffer from error accumulation and limited physical consistency, especially in multiphysics and complex geometries.
To address these challenges, we propose PEGNet, a Physics-Embedded Graph Network that incorporates PDE-guided message passing to redesign the graph neural network architecture. By embedding key PDE dynamics like convection, viscosity, and diffusion into distinct message functions, the model naturally integrates physical constraints into its forward propagation, producing more stable and physically consistent solutions.
Additionally, a hierarchical architecture is employed to capture multi-scale features, and physical regularization is integrated into the loss function to further enforce adherence to governing physics. We evaluated PEGNet on benchmarks, including custom datasets for respiratory airflow and drug delivery, showing significant improvements in long-term prediction accuracy and physical consistency over existing methods.

PEGNet: A Physics-Embedded Graph Network for Long-Term Stable Multiphysics Simulation

Online test-time adaptation addresses the train-test domain gap by adapting the model on unlabeled streaming test inputs before making the final prediction. However, online adaptation for 3D human pose estimation suffers from error accumulation when relying on self-supervision with imperfect predictions, leading to degraded performance over time. To mitigate this fundamental challenge, we propose a novel solution that highlights the use of motion discretization. Specifically, we employ unsupervised clustering in the latent motion representation space to derive a set of anchor motions, whose regularity aids in supervising the human pose estimator and enables efficient self-replay. Additionally, we introduce an effective and efficient soft-reset mechanism by reverting the pose estimator to its exponential moving average during continuous adaptation. We examine long-term online adaptation by continuously adapting to out-of-domain streaming test videos of the same individual, which allows for the capture of consistent personal shape and motion traits throughout the streaming observation. By mitigating error accumulation, our solution enables robust exploitation of these personal traits for enhanced accuracy. Experiments demonstrate that our solution outperforms previous online test-time adaptation methods and validate our design choices.

Robust Long-Term Test-Time Adaptation for 3D Human Pose Estimation Through Motion Discretization

Navigating human-populated environments without causing discomfort is a critical capability for socially-aware agents. While rule-based approaches offer interpretability through predefined psychological principles, they often lack generalizability and flexibility. Conversely, data-driven methods can learn complex behaviors from large-scale datasets, but are typically inefficient, opaque, and difficult to align with human intuitions. To bridge this gap, we propose RLSLM, a hybrid Reinforcement Learning framework that integrates a rule-based Social Locomotion Model, grounded in empirical behavioral experiments, into the reward function of a reinforcement learning framework. The social locomotion model generates an orientation-sensitive social comfort field that quantifies human comfort across space, enabling socially aligned navigation policies with minimal training. RLSLM then jointly optimizes mechanical energy and social comfort, allowing agents to avoid intrusions into personal or group space. A human-agent interaction experiment using an immersive VR-based setup demonstrates that RLSLM outperforms state-of-the-art rule-based models in user experience. Ablation and sensitivity analyses further show the model’s significantly improved interpretability over conventional data-driven methods. This work presents a scalable, human-centered methodology that effectively integrates cognitive science and machine learning for real-world social navigation.

RLSLM: A Hybrid Framework Combining Reinforcement Learning and a Rule-based Social Locomotion Model for Socially-aware Navigation

Accurate prediction of patient drug response is critical for precision cancer medicine but remains constrained by limited clinical data. While in vitro cell line data offer a scalable alternative, effective cross-domain transfer remains challenging. Many existing methods tend to overlook heterogeneous domain shifts across biological contexts, underrepresent the intrinsic differences between cell lines and patient tissues, and insufficiently capture high-order gene-drug interactions. To address these challenges, we propose **MACB-DRP**, a hierarchical transfer learning framework comprising three complementary stages that progressively coordinate adaptation across tissue, drug, and sample levels while enabling representation separation. The framework begins with tissue-aware domain adaptation, leveraging cancer-type classification and unsupervised alignment to preserve biologically meaningful structure across domains. It then incorporates drug-conditioned adversarial transfer for distribution alignment, coupled with bilinear fusion to model nonlinear and high-order gene-drug interactions. Finally, contrastive anchoring with feature-matched pairs enables fine-grained sample-level alignment, while feature-mismatched negatives preserve irreducible biological disparities. Experimental evaluation demonstrates that MACB-DRP achieves comprehensive predictive performance for patient drug responses, with robust results across multiple cancer types and nine drugs, and further reveals hierarchical structure across drugs and tissues in the visualization. These findings highlight the potential of biologically guided domain adaptation for improving translational pharmacogenomics.

Multi-Level Domain Adaptation and Contrastive Domain Isolation with Bilinear Fusion for Patient Drug Response Prediction

Accurate exploration of protein conformational ensembles is essential for uncovering function but remains hard because molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations suffer from high computational costs and energy-barrier trapping.
This paper presents Energy Preference Optimization (EPO), an online refinement algorithm that turns a pretrained protein ensemble generator into an energy-aware sampler without extra MD trajectories.
Specifically, EPO leverages stochastic differential equation sampling to explore the conformational landscape and incorporates a novel energy-ranking mechanism based on list-wise preference optimization.
Crucially, EPO introduces a practical upper bound to efficiently approximate the intractable probability of long sampling trajectories in continuous-time generative models, making it easily adaptable to existing pretrained generators.
On Tetrapeptides, ATLAS, and Fast-Folding benchmarks, EPO successfully generates diverse and physically realistic ensembles, establishing a new state-of-the-art in nine evaluation metrics.
These results demonstrate that energy-only preference signals can efficiently steer generative models toward thermodynamically consistent conformational ensembles, providing an alternative to long MD simulations and widening the applicability of learned potentials in structural biology and drug discovery.

EPO: Diverse and Realistic Protein Ensemble Generation via Energy Preference Optimization

Emotional Support Conversation (ESC) aims to alleviate individuals’ negative emotions through multi-turn dialogues, where effective strategy planning and response generation are essential. However, existing methods often suffer from limitations in both reasonable planning support strategies and effectively expressing them in responses. To address these challenges, we propose a novel LLM-based Emotional Support Conversation Agent (ESCA) with a plug-in strategy planner and a strategy-aligned prompt generator. The strategy planner cooperate with four aspects of the seeker’s state including emotion intensity, trust degree, dialogue behavior, and stage of change, to enhance the rationality and effectiveness of the strategy prediction. To ensure that predicted strategies are better conveyed, the prompt generator integrates strategy-aligned instructions, knowledge, and context to generate the soft prompt for guiding the LLM to generate supportive responses. In addition to supervised fine-tuning, the prompt generator is further optimized by the reinforcement learning. Experimental results demonstrate that ESCA significantly improves both response quality and the success rate of achieving the ESC task goals.

ESCA: An Emotional Support Conversation Agent for Enhancing Reasonable Strategy Planning and Effective Expression

The Diffusion Transformer plays a pivotal role in advancing text-to-image and text-to-video generation, owing primarily to its inherent scalability. However, existing controlled diffusion transformer methods incur significant parameter and computational overheads and suffer from inefficient resource allocation due to their failure to account for the varying relevance of control information across different transformer layers. To address this, we propose the Relevance-Guided Efficient Controllable Generation framework, RelaCtrl, enabling efficient and resource-optimized integration of control signals into the Diffusion Transformer. First, we evaluate the relevance of each layer in the Diffusion Transformer to the control information by assessing the "ControlNet Relevance Score"—i.e., the impact of skipping each control layer on both the quality of generation and the control effectiveness during inference. Based on the strength of the relevance, we then tailor the positioning, parameter scale, and modeling capacity of the control layers to reduce unnecessary parameters and redundant computations. Additionally, to further improve efficiency, we replace the self-attention and FFN in the commonly used copy block with the carefully designed Two-Dimensional Shuffle Mixer (TDSM), enabling efficient implementation of both the token and channel mixer. Qualitative and quantitative experimental results demonstrate that our approach achieves superior performance with only 15% of the parameters and computational complexity compared to PixArt-$\delta$.

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