Michael D. Moffitt

This week, I had an opportunity I could not reject: Presenting my team’s 2nd place prize-winning solution to Kaggle’s NeuroGolf 2026 competition IN-PERSON at IJCAI 2026 in Bremen, Germany. I have never presented at ANY talk or conference before, let alone a well-regarded one (try NeurIPS next? 😂 ). This went far above the goal I set at the beginning of 2025. Stage fright? Not at all Need to memorize a script? Not at all I trusted that I knew the material well enough. I poured my hearts out and made a large portion (some unpopular) of the design decisions for the team during the competition. I knew the choices we made, what worked, what didn’t, from the inside out and that’s enough to be confident and speak naturally. I am prepared for any question that may come out. I was right, it turns out my historical fears of public speaking were totally inexistent. From the beginning of NeuroGolf, I badly wanted to place in the top 3 to get this opportunity. I posted on social media, reached out to the top 10 teams via email for potential team ups, only 1 agreed. Later, we received over 30 different requests to team up but we remained extremely selective so each new addition compounds our team's capabilities. I have been burned too many times by pursuing my own interests in “stealth” while going the common route, the one my family thought was best suited for me, as my primary responsibility. It just won’t work. I need to ask for what I want even if it looked unrealistic. I cannot expect anyone to read my mind. The worst I can receive is a “no”, and even that has an opportunity to turn into a “yes” someday. And I made it here! My Kaggle experience has taught me: I just don’t get much joy from simply executing someone else’s solution. I want to be good enough to create my own! I would love to thank @mmoffitt and @ChrisDeotte for the lunch! Chris, you have helped me so much in my Kaggle journey! I am so grateful! Without you generous sharing, I don't think I would have progressed as much! It's a pleasure to finally get to meet you in person! I still remember my "genesis" on Kaggle, forking your "How To Train Open Book Model - Part 1" training notebook!

I will be speaking on our 2nd place Kaggle NeuroGolf competition solution! 18 August 2026  Tuesday 16:35- 18:00   Room 4.1 A with a capacity of max 220 participants. see you there! #IJCAI2026

In the recently completed NeuroGolf competition, we finished 2nd / 2963 teams. Finally, after 3 years, I broke into the top 100 in Kaggle Competitions and earned my 4th gold medal! It took me 2 years after my first win in the PII competition in April 2024 to become a prize winner again! I had thoughts "was I even improving?" the answer is, just don't give up! Progress sometimes isn't a straight line. We had a diverse team, Jacek and Yuichiro are both experienced heuristic golfers while me, @chankhavu and Niu Jin were more experienced on the ML side! Each team member ran their own pipeline independently without much sharing, to improve the diversity. I think this was crucial for us avoiding local optimas!