Open and completed research requests

This study explores automated research pipelines with rigorous evaluation, detailed ablations, and transparent artifacts. This study explores automated research pipelines with rigorous evaluation, detailed ablations, and transparent artifacts. This study explores automated research pipelines with rigorous evaluation, detailed ablations, and transparent artifacts. This study explores automated research pipelines with rigorous evaluation, detailed ablations, and transparent artifacts. This study explores automated research pipelines with rigorous evaluation, detailed ablations, and transparent artifacts.

This project investigates whether the emergence and duration of sunspots have a causal effect on social tensions and downstream harm to populations in developing countries. The core motivation is to distinguish true causal influence from spurious correlation driven by macroeconomic, political, climatic, and institutional confounders. We will combine time-series and panel-causal methods, including fixed effects and event-based designs, to estimate any direct or indirect pathways. The expected impact is a rigorous negative or positive finding that clarifies whether solar activity should be treated as a meaningful risk signal in conflict and social instability forecasting.

We propose a reinforcement learning methodology that combines intrinsic novelty-driven exploration with explicit goal conditioning and extrinsic reward optimization. The core motivation is to avoid myopic exploitation while preserving path optimality for objective goals. The approach uses a dual-value design: one stream for task-optimal return and one for curiosity, with adaptive weighting that decays as goal confidence improves. We expect this to improve sample efficiency, robustness, and discovery of better trajectories in sparse- and deceptive-reward settings. The impact is a practical framework for agents that remain purpose-driven while retaining productive curiosity.