The people behind the papers.
Long-form conversations with the authors of the year’s leading AI conference papers, from ICLR, ICML and NeurIPS to ACL, EMNLP and CVPR. Recorded in Singapore. Every claim linked to the paper.
Five formats, one standard
From ninety minutes to five, every format is built on the paper itself, and every claim can be checked against it.
The long form. One author, one paper and the path that led to it: the idea, the experiment that nearly killed it, what the reviewers asked, and what comes next. Recorded in Singapore or at the conference.
15 minutes, with the figuresMeridian BriefsThe author explains one paper with its own figures on screen: the claim, the evidence, the limits. For the reader who has fifteen minutes before a meeting.
Weekly, five minutes to readMeridian NotesA short newsletter. Each item is a paper and why it matters, in a fixed structure: what is new, the evidence, the catch, who should care. Every item links to the paper.
Before and after each major conferenceVenue ReportsWhat to watch before ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, ACL, EMNLP and CVPR, and what mattered afterwards: the orals, the awards, the trends, and the authors to know. Part of Meridian Pro.
Singapore Sessions and conference eveningsMeridian LivePublic recordings and seminars in Singapore, and small side events at the major conferences.
Season one: twelve themes, twelve authors
Each episode takes one theme from this year’s programme and one author whose paper moved it. Guests are announced when the episode is released, never before they have agreed in writing.
How models learn to reason
What actually changes inside a model trained to think step by step, and what the evaluations miss.
Guest announced on releaseRetrieval, memory and long context
When a model should look something up, when it should remember, and why long context did not end retrieval.
Guest announced on releaseLanguage models for Asian languages
Tokenisation, data and evaluation for Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Bahasa and the languages between them.
Guest announced on releaseAgents that use tools
Planning, tool use and recovery from error, and how to tell an agent benchmark from a demo.
Guest announced on releaseThe science of evaluation
Contamination, judges that are models, and what a benchmark is for once models saturate it.
Guest announced on releaseTraining and serving efficiently
Quantisation, distillation, mixture-of-experts and the economics that decide which ideas ship.
Guest announced on releaseWhat the author thinks, what the paper shows, what we think
Most interviews blur the three. We label them. Pro transcripts tag every substantive line, link findings to the table or section that supports them, and keep our own reading apart.
We expected the smaller model to collapse on the longer problems. It didn't, and that is the part I still find surprising.
Author's viewOn the held-out set, the method improves accuracy over the strongest baseline in four of the five task families; the fifth is within noise.
Paper finding · Table 2, §4.1If that holds at larger scale, it would make the technique cheap enough for most teams to try. The paper does not test that.
Meridian interpretationReviewer two asked whether the gains came from the data rather than the method. That was the right question.
Author's viewThe ablation that trains on the same data without the method recovers less than half of the gain.
Paper finding · Table 4, §5Come to Singapore and tell us how you did it.
Each month we invite a small number of authors to Singapore: a long-form recording in the studio, a fifteen-minute Brief with your figures, and, if you want, a public seminar at MTRI’s Singapore office in One-north. We cover return travel and up to three nights. We never pay appearance fees, and no one pays to appear.
- Singapore hosted ICLR in 2025 and AAAI in 2026
- Magellan Global’s headquarters and MTRI’s Singapore office are here
- A short flight from most of Asia’s research labs
- Recording, seminar and a day to see the city
How guests are chosen
Selection is editorial and never for sale. Public signals narrow the field; researchers read the papers; editors choose.
Where the papers come from
The venues we follow, by their usual month. Each page explains the venue, links to its official site and proceedings, and shows what Meridian does there.
For teams who need to keep up
Meridian Pro adds annotated transcripts, the Briefs library, Venue Reports before and after each major conference, and the Author Map: who is working on what. The Research Desk brings the editors to your team each quarter.
Three rules that do not bend
- No one pays to appear, and sponsors never choose guests, questions or edits.
- Every sponsored or commissioned piece is labelled where it appears.
- An interview is not an endorsement; views, findings and interpretation are labelled.
Questions
What is Impactio Meridian?
A Magellan Global brand that interviews the authors of top AI conference papers, at ICLR, ICML, NeurIPS, ACL, EMNLP, CVPR and other venues, in long-form conversations, short paper briefs and a weekly newsletter. It begins as an Impactio initiative, with research support from MTRI.
Who are the guests?
Authors of papers accepted at the leading AI conferences, chosen by the editors for the substance of the work. Selection uses public signals (orals, spotlights, awards, released code and data) and a reading by researchers; it is never for sale.
Where is it recorded?
In Singapore, where Magellan Global is headquartered and where MTRI has an office at One-north, and at the major conferences. Some conversations are recorded remotely.
Is an interview an endorsement?
No. An appearance on Meridian is not an academic endorsement of the paper, the author or their institution. We separate what the author says, what the paper shows and what we think, and label each.
How does Meridian make money?
Disclosed sponsorship, Meridian Pro subscriptions and the Research Desk for teams, live events and licensing. None of these buys an appearance or editorial input.
Impactio, MTRI and Magellan Global
Meridian begins as an Impactio initiative. Impactio helps researchers show the impact of their work; Meridian gives that work a wider audience. MTRI, the group’s research institute in Tokyo and Singapore, reads the papers with us and keeps the questions technical. Magellan Global, headquartered in Singapore, is the group behind both.
magellanglobal.com · About Meridian · Related-party disclosures
Get Meridian Notes every week
Five minutes, every Friday: the papers that mattered and why, each linked to the source.