FAIR Universe Weak Lensing ML Uncertainty Challenge: Dataset and Cosmological Inference

To address this gap, we present the FAIR Universe Weak Lensing Machine Learning Uncertainty Challenge, one of the NeurIPS 2025 competitions, as a benchmark dataset and evaluation study. It comes from a paper posted to arXiv on 10 November 2026. Weak gravitational lensing is a powerful cosmological probe that enables direct mapping of the matter distribution and precise constraints on the fundamental parameters governing structure formation in the universe. In recent years, machine learning has shown strong potential for extracting cosmological information from weak-lensing data beyond traditional summary statistics. However, progress has been limited by the lack of standardized benchmarks that capture the complexity of the dataset, simulator imperfections, and various systematic biases encountered in realistic analyses. Our dataset reflects realistic weak-lensing observations, incorporating multiple systematic biases, and thereby providing a controlled testbed for robust cosmological inference under uncertainties. We summarize the main methodological advances developed by the winners of our challenge, including data augmentation with conditional optimal transport, an AI-agent-driven approach for parameter inference, ensemble learning, Vision Transformer-based architectures, and physics-informed feature integration. By unifying the benchmark dataset and the winning solutions, this work provides a community resource for developing and evaluating machine learning methods for weak lensing cosmology and, more broadly, for scientific inference under systematic uncertainties.

Why it counts

To address this gap, we present the FAIR Universe Weak Lensing Machine Learning Uncertainty Challenge, one of the NeurIPS 2025 competitions, as a benchmark dataset and evaluation study. By unifying the benchmark dataset and the winning solutions, this work provides a community resource for developing and evaluating machine learning methods for weak lensing cosmology and, more broadly, for scientific inference under systematic uncertainties.

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What is not known

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