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Marco Pacini

Researcher at Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, Italy

My research focuses on the mathematical foundations of Geometric Deep Learning and Equivariant Machine Learning, with two main directions:

  • Approximation Theory of Equivariant Neural Networks. A substantial part of my work concerns density and approximation properties of equivariant neural networks, with particular attention to the role of their separation power.

  • Characterization of Equivariant Activations. Since point-wise nonlinearities such as ReLU are not compatible with arbitrary symmetries, part of my work characterizes which pairs of group representations and scalar activation
    functions induce equivariant nonlinearities.

Selected Publications

Approximation Theory of Equivariant Neural Networks

  1. ICLR
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    On Universality of Deep Equivariant Networks
    Marco Pacini, Mircea Petrache, Bruno Lepri, and 2 more authors
    International Conference on Learning Representations, 2026
  2. NeurIPS
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    On Universality Classes of Equivariant Networks
    Marco Pacini, Gabriele Santin, Bruno Lepri, and 1 more author
    Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2025
  3. ICLR
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    Separation Power of Equivariant Neural Networks
    Marco Pacini, Xiaowen Dong, Bruno Lepri, and 1 more author
    International Conference on Learning Representations, 2025

Characterization of Equivariant Activations

  1. ICLR
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    A Characterization Theorem for Equivariant Networks with Point-wise Activations
    Marco Pacini, Xiaowen Dong, Bruno Lepri, and 1 more author
    International Conference on Learning Representations, 2024