J. Alberto Conejero

Nicolás Firbas, Òscar Garibo-i-Orts, Miguel Ángel Garcia-March et al.

The results of the Anomalous Diffusion Challenge (AnDi Challenge) have shown that machine learning methods can outperform classical statistical methodology at the characterization of anomalous diffusion in both the inference of the anomalous diffusion exponent alpha associated with each trajectory (Task 1), and the determination of the underlying diffusive regime which produced such trajectories (Task 2). Furthermore, of the five teams that finished in the top three across both tasks of the AnDi challenge, three of those teams used recurrent neural networks (RNNs). While RNNs, like the long short-term memory (LSTM) network, are effective at learning long-term dependencies in sequential data, their key disadvantage is that they must be trained sequentially. In order to facilitate training with larger data sets, by training in parallel, we propose a new transformer based neural network architecture for the characterization of anomalous diffusion. Our new architecture, the Convolutional Transformer (ConvTransformer) uses a bi-layered convolutional neural network to extract features from our diffusive trajectories that can be thought of as being words in a sentence. These features are then fed to two transformer encoding blocks that perform either regression or classification. To our knowledge, this is the first time transformers have been used for characterizing anomalous diffusion. Moreover, this may be the first time that a transformer encoding block has been used with a convolutional neural network and without the need for a transformer decoding block or positional encoding. Apart from being able to train in parallel, we show that the ConvTransformer is able to outperform the previous state of the art at determining the underlying diffusive regime in short trajectories (length 10-50 steps), which are the most important for experimental researchers.

Arnau Igualde Sáez, Lamyae Rhomrasi, Yusef Ahsini et al.

Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) promise advanced vision language capabilities, yet their effectiveness in visually presented mathematics remains underexplored. This paper analyzes the development and evaluation of MLLMs for mathematical problem solving, focusing on diagrams, multilingual text, and symbolic notation. We then assess several models, including GPT 4o, Pixtral, Qwen VL, Llama 3.2 Vision variants, and Gemini 2.0 Flash in a multilingual Kangaroo style benchmark spanning English, French, Spanish, and Catalan. Our experiments reveal four key findings. First, overall precision remains moderate across geometry, visual algebra, logic, patterns, and combinatorics: no single model excels in every topic. Second, while most models see improved accuracy with questions that do not have images, the gain is often limited; performance for some remains nearly unchanged without visual input, indicating underutilization of diagrammatic information. Third, substantial variation exists across languages and difficulty levels: models frequently handle easier items but struggle with advanced geometry and combinatorial reasoning. Notably, Gemini 2.0 Flash achieves the highest precision on image based tasks, followed by Qwen VL 2.5 72B and GPT 4o, though none approach human level performance. Fourth, a complementary analysis aimed at distinguishing whether models reason or simply recite reveals that Gemini and GPT 4o stand out for their structured reasoning and consistent accuracy. In contrast, Pixtral and Llama exhibit less consistent reasoning, often defaulting to heuristics or randomness when unable to align their outputs with the given answer options.

Yusef Ahsini, Marc Escoto, J. Alberto Conejero

Anomalous diffusion occurs in a wide range of systems, including protein transport within cells, animal movement in complex habitats, pollutant dispersion in groundwater, and nanoparticle motion in synthetic materials. Accurately estimating the anomalous diffusion exponent and the diffusion coefficient from the particle trajectories is essential to distinguish between sub-diffusive, super-diffusive, or normal diffusion regimes. These estimates provide a deeper insight into the underlying dynamics of the system, facilitating the identification of particle behaviors and the detection of changes in diffusion states. However, analyzing short and noisy video data, which often yield incomplete and heterogeneous trajectories, poses a significant challenge for traditional statistical approaches. We introduce a data-driven method that integrates particle tracking, an attention U-Net architecture, and a change-point detection algorithm to address these issues. This approach not only infers the anomalous diffusion parameters with high accuracy but also identifies temporal transitions between different states, even in the presence of noise and limited temporal resolution. Our methodology demonstrated strong performance in the 2nd Anomalous Diffusion (AnDi) Challenge benchmark within the top submissions for video tasks.

Òscar Garibo-i-Orts, Nicolás Firbas, Laura Sebastiá et al.

Anomalous diffusion is present at all scales, from atomic to large scales. Some exemplary systems are; ultra-cold atoms, telomeres in the nucleus of cells, moisture transport in cement-based materials, the free movement of arthropods, and the migration patterns of birds. The characterization of the diffusion gives critical information about the dynamics of these systems and provides an interdisciplinary framework with which to study diffusive transport. Thus, the problem of identifying underlying diffusive regimes and inferring the anomalous diffusion exponent {$α$} with high confidence is critical to physics, chemistry, biology, and ecology. Classification and analysis of raw trajectories combining machine learning techniques with statistics extracted from them have widely been studied in the Anomalous Diffusion Challenge ge (Munoz-Gil et al., 2021). Here we present a new data-driven method for working with diffusive trajectories. This method utilizes Gramian Angular Fields (GAF) to encode one-dimensional trajectories as images (Gramian Matrices), while preserving their spatiotemporal structure for input to computer-vision models. This allows us to leverage two well-established pre-trained computer-vision models, ResNet and MobileNet, to characterize the underlying diffusive regime, and infer the anomalous diffusion exponent {$α$}. Short raw trajectories, of lengths between 10 and 50, are commonly encountered in single-particle tracking experiments and are the most difficult to characterize. We show that by using GAF images, we can outperform the current state-of-the-art while increasing accessibility to machine learning methods in an applied setting.

Òscar Garibo i Orts, Miguel A. Garcia-March, J. Alberto Conejero

Anomalous diffusion occurs at very different scales in nature, from atomic systems to motions in cell organelles, biological tissues or ecology, and also in artificial materials, such as cement. Being able to accurately measure the anomalous exponent associated with a given particle trajectory, thus determining whether the particle subdiffuses, superdiffuses or performs normal diffusion is of key importance to understand the diffusion process. Also, it is often important to trustingly identify the model behind the trajectory, as this gives a large amount of information on the system dynamics. Both aspects are particularly difficult when the input data are short and noisy trajectories. It is even more difficult if one cannot guarantee that the trajectories output in experiments is homogeneous, hindering the statistical methods based on ensembles of trajectories. We present a data-driven method able to infer the anomalous exponent and to identify the type of anomalous diffusion process behind single, noisy and short trajectories, with good accuracy. This model was used in our participation in the Anomalous Diffusion (AnDi) Challenge. A combination of convolutional and recurrent neural networks were used to achieve state-of-the-art results when compared to methods participating in the AnDi Challenge, ranking top 4 in both classification and diffusion exponent regression.