AI4OPT is a hands-on workshop and friendly competition exploring agentic AI systems that write scientific papers in optimization. We kick off the challenge during the AI Autumn School ASCOMP (competition start) and culminate at ICOMP with a showcase of the best agent-authored papers.

Domain experts (“oracles”) will supply several optimization research problems. Your goal: build or adapt an agentic LLM pipeline that reads the problem, generates hypotheses, runs experiments, analyzes results, and drafts a short-paper in standard scientific style.

Rules

1. Register for the competition
2. We’ll provide you with an OpenRouter API key preloaded with credits

3. Choose one of the problems below:

   The “Moscow problem”

   Accelerated Federated Optimization in the Interpolation Regime

   Any other problem of your choice

4. Submit your solution via the Google Form by 18 October, 23:59:59 (Abu Dhabi local time). You may use any template

5. The submission must include:
   1. A free-form report (PDF) describing what you did
   2. A 4-page A4 paper (PDF) prepared with substantial help from any AI assistant; any template is acceptable
6. Prize: The winner receives a travel and accommodation grant for the next ICOMP!

AI instruments

You may use any instrument you want, there are plenty of them:

• Sakana AI Scientist v2
• Agent Laboratory
• Zochi
• AI-Researcher
• Holosophos - seems like the most straightforward and easy to set up among others, while powerful enough. Link with the quickstart below:

🧠 Quick start guide with Holosophos

Key dates

• Competition start: October 14-th
• Submission deadline: October 18-th
• Workshop & awards @ ICOMP: October 19-th

Winners

The winner

Chi Zhao, SPbU

Honorable mention

• Maria Ivanova, YSDA, Skoltech
• Alexey Kravatskiy, MIPT
• Maxim Mashtaler, MIPT