About
I am a PhD student based in Nice, France, affiliated with CNRS, 3IA, INRIA, COATI and Université Côte d’Azur. My supervisor is Prof. Emanuele Natale. My research focuses on the theoretical aspects of machine learning, specifically tackling problems at the intersection of theoretical computer science and physics. Drawing on my background in Physics (BS–MS, IISER Kolkata), my current interests center on foundational topics, including Hopfield networks and brain-inspired learning dynamics, the mathematical theory of neural network pruning, and the analysis of neural scaling laws.
Education
Research
Directed Hopfield Networks
I am working on the theory of Directed Hopfield networks (DHNs). DHNs are a variation of classic Hopfield networks where connections between neurons are not symmetric. This asymmetry prevents them from having a simple energy function, meaning they rarely settle into stable states. Instead, their dynamics can be much richer, producing cycles or even chaotic behavior. I am interested in the capacity of DHNs to store limit-cycle attractors and their robustness.
Strong Lottery Ticket Hypothesis
I have also been working on the Strong Lottery Ticket Hypothesis, which states that within a randomly initialized neural network, there exist subnetworks that can achieve performance comparable to a trained network without any training. Specifically, I have been interested in the interplay between weight quantization and pruning in the context of the Strong Lottery Ticket Hypothesis. See my Publications for more details.
Publications
- A Unified Framework for Quantized and Continuous Strong Lottery Tickets by Aakash Kumar and Emanuele Natale (2025) - under double blind review.
- Quantization vs Pruning: Insights from the Strong Lottery Ticket Hypothesis by Aakash Kumar and Emanuele Natale (2025) - under double blind review.
Teaching
- Teaching assistant for the course Mathematical Methods for Physics I offered in Spring 2025 at IISER Kolkata to second year undergraduates.
- Gave a talk on the early works of John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for which they won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.
