Willy Rodríguez
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Toulouse, France

Willy Rodríguez

Applied Mathematician and AI Researcher

I develop mathematical and machine-learning methods for extracting reliable insight from complex data, with applications spanning population genetics, language, healthcare, and signal processing.

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Portrait of Willy Rodríguez

Biography

I am an applied mathematician and AI researcher based in Toulouse, France. My early research focused on probabilistic models for reconstructing demographic history from genomic data, with particular attention to population structure, coalescent processes, and the limits of statistical inference. Since then, I have worked across natural-language processing, medical imaging, signal processing, generative models, and AI agents, both in academic collaborations and in industry. I am especially interested in methods that combine mathematical structure, statistical reasoning, and machine learning to produce systems that are scientifically meaningful and practically useful. Alongside my research and engineering work, I teach, mentor student research, and have been president of Toulouse Data Science since 2024.

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Current focus

previous

Population genetics and demographic inference

Genomic data often look similar under very different demographic stories, which makes it hard to tell population-size change apart from population structure.

current

NLP, embeddings, and topic modelling

Large text collections are difficult to summarise in a way that remains interpretable and faithful to the underlying corpus.

current

AI for healthcare and scientific imaging

Clinical and scientific images are high-dimensional, sensitive, and often incomplete, which raises questions of representation, uncertainty, and privacy-aware use.

current

Hybrid models, signal processing, and agentic systems

Learned components are often most useful when combined with classical models, filters, or tools rather than used in isolation.

All projects

Research software and studies

IICR and demographic inference

Research on separating population-size variation from population structure using coalescent models and the inverse instantaneous coalescence rate.

Researcher and co-author · INSA Toulouse / Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse

Coalescent theory · IICR · Identifiability · Simulation

Academic collaborations and mentoring

Transformer embeddings for topic coherence

Ongoing work on comparing transformer-based embeddings and classical topic models for interpretable analysis of large text corpora.

Researcher and mentor

Topic modelling · Transformer embeddings · Coherence measures · Representation learning

Selected applied research

AI for pulmonary and medical data

Applied research on decision support, imaging and clinical data workflows, and privacy-aware deployment in healthcare settings.

Applied AI researcher · Torus

Medical imaging · Decision support · Privacy-aware workflows · Generative models

Selected publications

Full list

  1. 2019

    Coalescence times for three genes provide sufficient information to distinguish population structure from population size changes

    Simona Grusea, Willy Rodríguez, Didier Pinchon, Lounès Chikhi, Simon Boitard, Olivier Mazet

    Journal of Mathematical Biology, 78(1), 189-224, 2019

    DOI · PubMed ·

    BibTeX
    @article{grusea2019coalescence,
  title = {Coalescence times for three genes provide sufficient information to distinguish population structure from population size changes},
  author = {Grusea, Simona and Rodr{\'i}guez, Willy and Pinchon, Didier and Chikhi, Loun{\`e}s and Boitard, Simon and Mazet, Olivier},
  journal = {Journal of Mathematical Biology},
  volume = {78},
  number = {1},
  pages = {189--224},
  year = {2019},
  doi = {10.1007/s00285-018-1272-4}
}

  2. 2018

    The IICR and the non-stationary structured coalescent: towards demographic inference with arbitrary changes in population structure

    Willy Rodríguez, Olivier Mazet, Simona Grusea, Armando Arredondo, Josué M. Corujo, Simon Boitard, Lounès Chikhi

    Heredity, 121(6), 663-678, 2018

    DOI · PubMed ·

    BibTeX
    @article{rodriguez2018nssc,
  title = {The IICR and the non-stationary structured coalescent: towards demographic inference with arbitrary changes in population structure},
  author = {Rodr{\'i}guez, Willy and Mazet, Olivier and Grusea, Simona and Arredondo, Armando and Corujo, Josu{\'e} M. and Boitard, Simon and Chikhi, Loun{\`e}s},
  journal = {Heredity},
  volume = {121},
  number = {6},
  pages = {663--678},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.1038/s41437-018-0148-0}
}

  3. 2018

    The IICR (inverse instantaneous coalescence rate) as a summary of genomic diversity: insights into demographic inference and model choice

    Lounès Chikhi, Willy Rodríguez, Simona Grusea, Patrícia Santos, Simon Boitard, Olivier Mazet

    Heredity, 120(1), 13-24, 2018

    DOI · PubMed ·

    BibTeX
    @article{chikhi2018iicr,
  title = {The IICR (inverse instantaneous coalescence rate) as a summary of genomic diversity: insights into demographic inference and model choice},
  author = {Chikhi, Loun{\`e}s and Rodr{\'i}guez, Willy and Grusea, Simona and Santos, Patr{\'i}cia and Boitard, Simon and Mazet, Olivier},
  journal = {Heredity},
  volume = {120},
  number = {1},
  pages = {13--24},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.1038/s41437-017-0005-6}
}

  4. 2016

    Inferring Population Size History from Large Samples of Genome-Wide Molecular Data - An Approximate Bayesian Computation Approach

    Simon Boitard, Willy Rodríguez, Flora Jay, Stefano Mona, Frédéric Austerlitz

    PLOS Genetics, 12(3), article e1005877, 2016

    DOI ·

    BibTeX
    @article{boitard2016popsize,
  title = {Inferring Population Size History from Large Samples of Genome-Wide Molecular Data - An Approximate Bayesian Computation Approach},
  author = {Boitard, Simon and Rodr{\'i}guez, Willy and Jay, Flora and Mona, Stefano and Austerlitz, Fr{\'e}d{\'e}ric},
  journal = {PLOS Genetics},
  volume = {12},
  number = {3},
  pages = {e1005877},
  year = {2016},
  doi = {10.1371/journal.pgen.1005877}
}

  5. 2015

    Demographic inference using genetic data from a single individual: Separating population size variation from population structure

    Olivier Mazet, Willy Rodríguez, Lounès Chikhi

    Theoretical Population Biology, 104, 46-58, 2015

    DOI ·

    BibTeX
    @article{mazet2015demographic,
  title = {Demographic inference using genetic data from a single individual: Separating population size variation from population structure},
  author = {Mazet, Olivier and Rodr{\'i}guez, Willy and Chikhi, Loun{\`e}s},
  journal = {Theoretical Population Biology},
  volume = {104},
  pages = {46--58},
  year = {2015},
  doi = {10.1016/j.tpb.2015.06.003}
}

Teaching and mentoring

Details

I teach and mentor in applied mathematics, probability, machine learning, and NLP. Public course details are listed only when titles, dates, and roles have been confirmed.

  • Topic modelling and transformer embeddings

    MIT PRIMES · mentor · 2025–2026

Selected talks

All talks

  • 2025-11-27

    Agents Autonomes – des LLMs au MCP et aux systèmes opérationnels

    Toulouse Data Science

  • 2016-06-20

    Reconstructing the demographic history of populations from genomic data

    PhD defence

Contact

I welcome conversations about research collaboration, academic teaching, mentoring, and scientific talks.