Dorian Baudry

Dorian Baudry

Inria researcher

Inria — GHOST team, Grenoble

Biography

I am a researcher at Inria and Université Grenoble-Alpes, in the GHOST team in Grenoble, which I joined in July 2025.

My research focuses on the theory of reinforcement learning, with a particular interest in posterior sampling and policy gradient methods. I study the exploration and optimization properties of these methods to understand when and how efficiently they learn. My interests also include multi-armed bandits and online learning.

Previously, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Statistics at the University of Oxford, working with Patrick Rebeschini on online learning and optimization.

Prior to that, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Inria Fairplay team, based at ENSAE Paris, collaborating with Vianney Perchet. My work focused on online algorithms and bandit models, particularly in structured and constrained problem settings, with practical applications in online advertising and recommendation systems.

I received my PhD in Computer Science from the University of Lille, supervised by Emilie Kaufmann and Odalric-Ambrym Maillard in the Inria ScooL team. My thesis focused on non-parametric algorithms for multi-armed bandits, with applications in agriculture and extensions to risk-aware learning and non-stationary environments. During my PhD, I also spent three months at Kyoto University collaborating with Junya Honda.

Interests

  • Reinforcement Learning Theory
  • Posterior Sampling
  • Policy Gradient Methods
  • Multi-Armed Bandits
  • Online Convex Optimization

Education

  • PhD in Computer Science, 2019-2022

    Université de Lille (Inria Lille, ScooL team)

  • MSc Mathématiques Vision Apprentissage (MVA), 2019

    ENS Paris-Saclay

  • MSc in Statistics and Computer Science, 2019

    ENSAE Paris

Publications

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Supervision

PhD students

  • Pako Maxence Tekou — Since October 2026. Theory of policy gradient methods, co-supervised with Bruno Gaujal.
  • Djamel Rassem Lamouri — Since October 2025. Stochastic approximation theory and its connections to machine learning, co-supervised with Nicolas Gast.

Past interns

  • Amine Oulum — M2 internship, Master MVA, ENS Paris-Saclay. Summer 2026.
  • Bastien Jacques — M1 internship, ENS Paris-Saclay. Summer 2026.
  • Nathan Boyer — M1 internship, ENS. Summer 2025. Best-of-Both-Worlds for linear bandits. Preprint.
  • Nathan Van Assche — M1 internship, ENSAE Paris. Reinforcement learning with predictions.

Teachings

Introduction to Bandits — Master ORCO

Academic year: 2026 · Université Grenoble-Alpes

An 8-hour introduction to multi-armed bandits, taught as part of the Optimization under Uncertainty course. The lecture notes cover bandit models, exploration, concentration inequalities, and explore then commit.

Lecture notes (PDF)

Work in progress. Last updated: 3 November 2026.

Experience

Download my CV (PDF)

 
 
 
 
 

Researcher

Inria, Université Grenoble-Alpes

Jul 2025 – Present Grenoble, France
Developing theoretical guarantees for reinforcement learning, with a focus on posterior sampling and policy gradient methods. Recent work covers instance-dependent regret in episodic MDPs and the bias of two-timescale stochastic approximation, alongside PhD and internship supervision in the GHOST team.
 
 
 
 
 

Research visit

Collaboration with Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi and Andrew Jacobsen

Oct 2025 Milan, Italy
Visited Nicolò Cesa-Bianchi and worked with him and Andrew Jacobsen, then a postdoctoral researcher in his group, on bandit convex optimization. This collaboration led to a perturbation approach to unconstrained linear bandits (ICML 2026), connecting bandit feedback to online linear optimization.
 
 
 
 
 

Post-doctoral researcher

Department of Statistics, University of Oxford

Jul 2024 – Jun 2025 Oxford, United Kingdom
With Patrick Rebeschini, shifted my focus toward policy gradient methods and online convex optimization. Characterized how learning rates affect regret in stochastic gradient bandits and developed guarantees for non-stationary bandit convex optimization.
 
 
 
 
 

Post-doctoral researcher

Inria Fairplay, ENSAE, Ecole Polytechnique

Jan 2023 – Jun 2024 Palaiseau, France
With Vianney Perchet, extended my work to learning in structured and strategic settings, including bandits with revenue constraints, online auctions and optimal stopping. Also investigated the value of reward lookahead in reinforcement learning.
 
 
 
 
 

Visiting student

Kyoto University

Apr 2022 – Jul 2022 Kyoto, Japan
Worked with Junya Honda on a unified regret analysis of randomized bandit algorithms, bringing Thompson sampling and Minimum Empirical Divergence under a common framework for parametric and non-parametric reward models. Research visit supported by the RELIANT associate team.
 
 
 
 
 

Teaching Assistant

University of Lille

Jan 2020 – Apr 2022 Lille, France
Taught around 150 hours of courses and tutorials in data mining, natural language processing and mathematics for economics, at bachelor’s and master’s levels.
 
 
 
 
 

Data Scientist

Kayrros

May 2019 – Oct 2019 Paris, France
Developed machine learning methods to detect structural changes in energy markets, combining financial time series, news and satellite-derived signals.