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Luca Pesce

8 accepted papers

2026

Efficient Learning of Compositional Targets with Hierarchical Spectral Methods

ICML 2026poster

Why depth yields a genuine computational advantage over shallow methods remains a central open question in learning theory. We study this question in a controlled high-dimensional Gaussian setting, focusing on compositional target functions. We analyze their learnability using an explicit three-laye…

Cited by 0SourceScholar
2025

A Random Matrix Theory Perspective on the Spectrum of Learned Features and Asymptotic Generalization Capabilities

AISTATS 2025oral

A key property of neural networks is their capacity of adapting to data during training. Yet, our current mathematical understanding of feature learning and its relationship to generalization remain limited. In this work, we provide a random matrix analysis of how fully-connected two-layer neural ne…

Cited by 0SourceScholar
2025

The Computational Advantage of Depth in Learning High-Dimensional Hierarchical Targets

NeurIPS 2025spotlight

Understanding the advantages of deep neural networks trained by gradient descent (GD) compared to shallow models remains an open theoretical challenge. In this paper, we introduce a class of target functions (single and multi-index Gaussian hierarchical targets) that incorporate a hierarchy of laten…

Cited by 0SourceScholar
2024

Asymptotics of feature learning in two-layer networks after one gradient-step

ICML 2024spotlight

In this manuscript, we investigate the problem of how two-layer neural networks learn features from data, and improve over the kernel regime, after being trained with a single gradient descent step. Leveraging the insight from (Ba et al., 2022), we model the trained network by a spiked Random Featur…

2024

Online Learning and Information Exponents: The Importance of Batch size & Time/Complexity Tradeoffs

ICML 2024poster

We study the impact of the batch size $n_b$ on the iteration time $T$ of training two-layer neural networks with one-pass stochastic gradient descent (SGD) on multi-index target functions of isotropic covariates. We characterize the optimal batch size minimizing the iteration time as a function of t…

Cited by 5SourcePDFScholar
2024

The Benefits of Reusing Batches for Gradient Descent in Two-Layer Networks: Breaking the Curse of Information and Leap Exponents

ICML 2024poster

We investigate the training dynamics of two-layer neural networks when learning multi-index target functions. We focus on multi-pass gradient descent (GD) that reuses the batches multiple times and show that it significantly changes the conclusion about which functions are learnable compared to sing…

2023

Are Gaussian Data All You Need? The Extents and Limits of Universality in High-Dimensional Generalized Linear Estimation

ICML 2023poster

In this manuscript we consider the problem of generalized linear estimation on Gaussian mixture data with labels given by a single-index model. Our first result is a sharp asymptotic expression for the test and training errors in the high-dimensional regime. Motivated by the recent stream of results…

Cited by 34SourcePDFScholar
2022

Subspace clustering in high-dimensions: Phase transitions & Statistical-to-Computational gap

NeurIPS 2022accept

A simple model to study subspace clustering is the high-dimensional $k$-Gaussian mixture model where the cluster means are sparse vectors. Here we provide an exact asymptotic characterization of the statistically optimal reconstruction error in this model in the high-dimensional regime with extensiv…