Cathy Wu

Eco-driving measures could significantly reduce vehicle emissions Implementing co-driving techniques, like the use of intelligent speed controls to mitigate congestion at traffic lights, can significantly reduce intersection carbon dioxide emissions without impactin...

Great fun (and great exercise) this morning with Omar shoveling out the driveway.

* Sorry to explain the reference, but friends will know that I've been very interested in eco-driving and its policy implications. news.mit.edu/2025/eco-dri...

What's an energy-efficient way to shovel snow?

Introducing eco-shoveling*, a two-stage technique to handle snow accumulation, while conserving energy in preparation for more shoveling later... Built to withstand three winter storms.

Yeah I think it varies based on context, like big city vs suburbia.

Here’s some cool stuff you can do with Bluesky It’s not just an Alf pics repository.

There is a mention of it as late as Nov 2024: www.theverge.com/24295933/blu...

Did something happen to the “my bangers” feed of your top bluesky posts? Is there an alternative?

Parking-aware navigation system could prevent frustration and emissions By minimizing the need to drive around looking for a parking spot, this technique can save drivers up to 35 minutes — and give them a realistic estimate of total travel time.

​New research from @cathywu.bsky.social et al. confirms something I've long suspected:

Navigation apps could save their users a lot of time — and tilt travel decisions toward transit and biking — if they showed users how long it takes to find parking.

That's an interesting suggestion!

Parking-aware navigation system could prevent frustration and emissions By minimizing the need to drive around looking for a parking spot, this technique can save drivers up to 35 minutes — and give them a realistic estimate of total travel time.

More here: news.mit.edu/2026/parking....

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2601.00521
Code: github.com/chickert/Pro...

Joint work with lead author Cameron Hickert, Sirui Li, Zhengbing He

#transportation #multimodal #parking #navigation #dynamicprogramming

Our resulting paper, Probability-Aware Parking Selection, shows that doing so can improve travel time estimates, save drivers time by routing them to parking, and make for fairer comparisons across transportation modes! And this work is featured today on the MIT Home Page!

Have you noticed how navigation apps include walking & waiting for public transit, but excludes parking & walking for driving? After being late a few times 😅, we finally did. We got curious: what if these apps account for parking?

Please share with anyone who might be a great fit!

Join us in our mission to use 𝗔𝗜/𝗠𝗟 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀 and to enable 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿, 𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲-𝗱𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹-𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀.

🗓️ Applications are reviewed 𝗼𝗻 𝗮 𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗶𝘀, starting immediately.
🔗 Details + how to apply: cathywu.github.io/prospective

📣 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗺𝘆 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗽!

I’m looking to hire 𝟭–𝟮 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗱𝗼𝗰𝘀 to work with us across the group’s research areas, including:
🤖 Deep reinforcement learning
🚦 Traffic modeling & control
🧠 Neural combinatorial optimization

Tesla's Roadmap to Nowhere I'll give him this: Elon Musk has a solid grasp of futurity-as-PR.

I'm gearing up for next week's Hype Studies conference in Barcelona, so I'm thinking about this stuff a lot. @davekarpf.bsky.social makes some great points here, but there's a 'Yes and...'

Yeah, same deal with navigating a city thanks to google maps

I think it goes beyond cost. There’s also talent and the know-how to adapt & implement the tech. For example, I don’t think the public sector has caught up on the last bunch of waves of tech yet, despite it getting commoditized. In general, I think it’s the rich getting richer phenomenon.

I've been struggling with this since realizing that the rich and powerful get first dibs on new tech. The only way I've been able to resolve the issue for myself is to deliberately work on applications for the public interest.

do you mean cost-benefit of research that's already done?

We should be asking ourselves more what research should be done vs what research can be done

Inviting #orms @thserra.bsky.social @vanhentenryck.bsky.social @vidalthi.bsky.social @bistradilkina.bsky.social @akazachk.bsky.social @lawlessopt.bsky.social @annanagurney.bsky.social

DiffCoALG@NeurIPS 2025 About this Workshop Combinatorial algorithms are fundamental across a wide range of domains, owing to their ability to model optimization and decision-making tasks under complex constraints. These alg...

🔥 New workshop at @neuripsconf.bsky.social!
DiffCoALG bridges the gap between classic algorithms & differentiable learning.
Think: LLM reasoning, routing, SAT, MIP — neurally optimized.
📌 Submit by Aug 22! 🤖🧠
🔗 sites.google.com/view/diffcoa...
#NeurIPS2025

This work would not have been possible without lead author @vindulaj.bsky.social and collaborators Baptiste Freydt, Ao Qu, Cameron Hickert, Edgar Sanchez, Catherine Tang, Mark Taylor, Blaine Leonard, as well as the financial support of UDOT, NSF, and Amazon AWS, and support from MIT SuperCloud.

Website: vindulamj.github.io/eco-drive/
Published paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Pre-print: arxiv.org/abs/2408.05609

Eco-driving measures could significantly reduce vehicle emissions Implementing co-driving techniques, like the use of intelligent speed controls to mitigate congestion at traffic lights, can significantly reduce intersection carbon dioxide emissions without impactin...

MIT News article: news.mit.edu/2025/eco-dri...

This project was 4 years in the making and it's finally out!

We found that controlling vehicle speeds to mitigate traffic across a city can cut carbon emissions between 11 and 22 percent. To do this, we used deep reinforcement learning to optimize one million eco-driving scenarios. 🚗🤖🧠

Eco-driving measures could significantly reduce vehicle emissions Implementing co-driving techniques, like the use of intelligent speed controls to mitigate congestion at traffic lights, can significantly reduce intersection carbon dioxide emissions without…

A new study led by Prof. Cathy Wu and colleagues reveals that eco-driving measures, such as dynamically adjusting vehicle speeds to reduce stopping and excessive acceleration, can cut carbon emissions between 11 and 22 percent. news.mit.edu/2025/eco-dri...

We’ve got an awesome workshop tomorrow at RLC on real-world RL! Also, I’m moderating the panel, so let me know if you have questions about applying RL. 🤖🧠🤖

Propose some socials for RLC! Research topics, affinity groups, niche interests, whatever comes to mind!

rl-conference.cc/call_for_soc...

Trying to make Ai2 so effective that people start seriously referring to us as "American DeepSeek" 🙏 lots of hard work to do.

Robust Autonomy Emerges from Self-Play Self-play has powered breakthroughs in two-player and multi-player games. Here we show that self-play is a surprisingly effective strategy in another domain. We show that robust and naturalistic drivi...

Hiring a postdoc to scale up and deploy RL-based planning onto some self-driving cars! We'll be building on arxiv.org/abs/2502.03349 and learn what the limits and challenges of RL planning are. Shoot me a message if interested and help spread the word please!

Full posting to come in a bit.