publications | Victor Barres

2026

arXiv

τ-Multilingual: Benchmarking Voice Agents Across Languages

Soham Ray, Edgard Santos Paiva, Ruben Valenzuela, Karthik Narasimhan, Keshav Dhandhania, and Victor Barres

2026

@misc{ray2026taumultilingual,
  title = {τ-Multilingual: Benchmarking Voice Agents Across Languages},
  author = {Ray, Soham and dos Santos Paiva, Edgard and Valenzuela, Ruben and Narasimhan, Karthik and Dhandhania, Keshav and Barres, Victor},
  year = {2026},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.CL},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.35820},
  keywords = {ai-agents}
}

arXiv

τ-Elicitation: Benchmarking Multi-Turn Entity Extraction in Voice Agents

Soham Ray and Victor Barres

2026

arXiv Bib HTML

@misc{ray2026tauelicitation,
  title = {τ-Elicitation: Benchmarking Multi-Turn Entity Extraction in Voice Agents},
  author = {Ray, Soham and Barres, Victor},
  year = {2026},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.AI},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.13602},
  keywords = {ai-agents}
}

arXiv

Hyper-τ-Bench: An Environment for End-To-End, Realistic Agent Construction

Quan Shi, Keshav Dhandhania, Karthik Narasimhan, and Victor Barres

2026

arXiv Bib HTML Website

@misc{shi2026hypertau,
  title = {Hyper-τ-Bench: An Environment for End-To-End, Realistic Agent Construction},
  author = {Shi, Quan and Dhandhania, Keshav and Narasimhan, Karthik and Barres, Victor},
  year = {2026},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.AI},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.04611},
  keywords = {ai-agents}
}

arXiv

AgentBeats: Agentifying Agent Assessment for Openness, Standardization, and Reproducibility

Xiaoyuan Liu, Jianhong Tu, Yuqi Chen, Siyuan Xie, Sihan Ren, Tianneng Shi, Gal Gantar, Evan Sandoval, Donghyun Lee, Daniel Miao, Peter J. Gilbert, Nick Hynes, Mauro Staver, Warren He, David Marn, Andrew Low, Xi Zhang, Elron Bandel, Michal Shmueli-Scheuer, Siva Reddy, Alexandre Drouin, Alexandre Lacoste, Ramayya Krishnan, Elham Tabassi, Yu Su, Victor Barres, Chenguang Wang, Wenbo Guo, and Dawn Song

2026

arXiv Bib HTML

@misc{liu2026agentbeats,
  title = {AgentBeats: Agentifying Agent Assessment for Openness, Standardization, and Reproducibility},
  author = {Liu, Xiaoyuan and Tu, Jianhong and Chen, Yuqi and Xie, Siyuan and Ren, Sihan and Shi, Tianneng and Gantar, Gal and Sandoval, Evan and Lee, Donghyun and Miao, Daniel and Gilbert, Peter J. and Hynes, Nick and Staver, Mauro and He, Warren and Marn, David and Low, Andrew and Zhang, Xi and Bandel, Elron and Shmueli-Scheuer, Michal and Reddy, Siva and Drouin, Alexandre and Lacoste, Alexandre and Krishnan, Ramayya and Tabassi, Elham and Su, Yu and Barres, Victor and Wang, Chenguang and Guo, Wenbo and Song, Dawn},
  year = {2026},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.AI},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.13608},
  keywords = {ai-agents}
}

ICML

τ-Knowledge: Evaluating Conversational Agents over Unstructured Knowledge

Quan Shi, Alexandra Zytek, Pedram Razavi, Karthik Narasimhan, and Victor Barres

arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.04370, 2026

Accepted at ICML 2026.

arXiv Bib HTML Code

@article{shi2026tauknowledge,
  title = {τ-Knowledge: Evaluating Conversational Agents over Unstructured Knowledge},
  author = {Shi, Quan and Zytek, Alexandra and Razavi, Pedram and Narasimhan, Karthik and Barres, Victor},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.04370},
  note = {Accepted at ICML 2026.},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.04370},
  keywords = {ai-agents}
}

ICML

τ-Voice: Benchmarking Full-Duplex Voice Agents on Real-World Domains

Victor Barres^*, Soham Ray^*, Keshav Dhandhania^*, and Karthik Narasimhan

2026

Accepted at ICML 2026.

arXiv Bib HTML Code

@misc{ray2026tauvoice,
  title = {τ-Voice: Benchmarking Full-Duplex Voice Agents on Real-World Domains},
  author = {Barres, Victor and Ray, Soham and Dhandhania, Keshav and Narasimhan, Karthik},
  note = {Accepted at ICML 2026.},
  year = {2026},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.SD},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.13686},
  keywords = {ai-agents}
}

2025

ICML
τ²-Bench: Evaluating Conversational Agents in a Dual-Control Environment

Victor Barres^*, Honghua Dong^*, Soham Ray, Xujie Si, and Karthik Narasimhan

2025

Oral at ICML 2026.

Abs arXiv Bib HTML Code Slides

We introduce τ²-bench, a benchmark for evaluating conversational agents in a dual-control environment, where both the agent and the user can take actions on the world. τ²-bench extends τ-bench’s tool-agent-user interaction setting and supports rigorous evaluation of agents that must coordinate with users in real-world customer-service scenarios.
@misc{barres2025tau2, title = {τ²-Bench: Evaluating Conversational Agents in a Dual-Control Environment}, author = {Barres, Victor and Dong, Honghua and Ray, Soham and Si, Xujie and Narasimhan, Karthik}, note = {Oral at ICML 2026.}, year = {2025}, archiveprefix = {arXiv}, primaryclass = {cs.AI}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07982}, keywords = {ai-agents} }

NAACL

From Generating Answers to Building Explanations: Integrating Multi-Round RAG and Causal Modeling for Scientific QA

Victor Barres^*, Clifton James McFate^*, Aditya Kalyanpur, Kailash Karthik Saravanakumar, Lori Moon, Natnael Seifu, and Abraham Bautista-Castillo

In Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Industry Track), 2025

Bib HTML Slides

@inproceedings{barres2025explanations,
  title = {From Generating Answers to Building Explanations: Integrating Multi-Round {RAG} and Causal Modeling for Scientific {QA}},
  author = {Barres, Victor and McFate, Clifton James and Kalyanpur, Aditya and Saravanakumar, Kailash Karthik and Moon, Lori and Seifu, Natnael and Bautista-Castillo, Abraham},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 Conference of the Nations of the Americas Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (Industry Track)},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/2025.naacl-industry.42/},
  keywords = {ai-agents}
}

2024

arXiv
LLM-ARC: Enhancing LLMs with an Automated Reasoning Critic

Aditya Kalyanpur, Kailash Karthik Saravanakumar, Victor Barres, Jennifer Chu-Carroll, David Melville, and David Ferrucci

2024

Abs arXiv Bib HTML

We introduce LLM-ARC, a neuro-symbolic framework designed to enhance the logical reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs), by combining them with an Automated Reasoning Critic (ARC). LLM-ARC employs an Actor-Critic method where the LLM Actor generates declarative logic programs along with tests for semantic correctness, while the Automated Reasoning Critic evaluates the code, runs the tests and provides feedback on test failures for iterative refinement.
@misc{kalyanpur2024llmarc, title = {{LLM-ARC}: Enhancing {LLMs} with an Automated Reasoning Critic}, author = {Kalyanpur, Aditya and Saravanakumar, Kailash Karthik and Barres, Victor and Chu-Carroll, Jennifer and Melville, David and Ferrucci, David}, year = {2024}, archiveprefix = {arXiv}, primaryclass = {cs.AI}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17663}, keywords = {ai-agents} }

arXiv

Multi-step Inference over Unstructured Data

Aditya Kalyanpur, Kailash Karthik Saravanakumar, Victor Barres, Clifton James McFate, Lori Moon, Natnael Seifu, Maksim Eremeev, Jose Barrera, Abraham Bautista-Castillo, Eric Brown, and David Ferrucci

2024

arXiv Bib HTML

@misc{kalyanpur2024multistep,
  title = {Multi-step Inference over Unstructured Data},
  author = {Kalyanpur, Aditya and Saravanakumar, Kailash Karthik and Barres, Victor and McFate, Clifton James and Moon, Lori and Seifu, Natnael and Eremeev, Maksim and Barrera, Jose and Bautista-Castillo, Abraham and Brown, Eric and Ferrucci, David},
  year = {2024},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.AI},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17987},
  keywords = {ai-agents}
}

2023

IJCNLP

Controllable Discovery of Intents: Incremental Deep Clustering Using Semi-Supervised Contrastive Learning

Mrinal Rawat, Hithesh Sankararaman, and Victor Barres

In Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing and the 3rd Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), 2023

DOI Bib HTML

@inproceedings{rawat2023controllable,
  title = {Controllable Discovery of Intents: Incremental Deep Clustering Using Semi-Supervised Contrastive Learning},
  author = {Rawat, Mrinal and Sankararaman, Hithesh and Barres, Victor},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing and the 3rd Conference of the Asia-Pacific Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)},
  pages = {793--803},
  year = {2023},
  doi = {10.18653/v1/2023.ijcnlp-main.51},
  url = {https://aclanthology.org/2023.ijcnlp-main.51/},
  keywords = {ai-agents}
}

2022

arXiv

Real-time Caller Intent Detection In Human-Human Customer Support Spoken Conversations

Mrinal Rawat and Victor Barres

2022

arXiv Bib HTML

@misc{rawat2022callerintent,
  title = {Real-time Caller Intent Detection In Human-Human Customer Support Spoken Conversations},
  author = {Rawat, Mrinal and Barres, Victor},
  year = {2022},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.CL},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.06802},
  keywords = {ai-agents}
}

2017

AAAI-SS

Can We Already Conceive of a Computational Construction Grammar that is Adequate to Address the Data of Neurolinguistics?

Michael A. Arbib, Nancy Chang, Peter Ford Dominey, Victor Barres, and Michael Spranger

In AAAI Spring Symposium on Computational Construction Grammar and Natural Language Understanding, 2017

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{arbib2017computational,
  title = {Can We Already Conceive of a Computational Construction Grammar that is Adequate to Address the Data of Neurolinguistics?},
  author = {Arbib, Michael A. and Chang, Nancy and Dominey, Peter Ford and Barres, Victor and Spranger, Michael},
  booktitle = {AAAI Spring Symposium on Computational Construction Grammar and Natural Language Understanding},
  year = {2017},
  url = {https://aaai.org/proceeding/02-spring-2017/},
  keywords = {cogsci}
}

AAAI-SS

Template Construction Grammar: A Schema-Theoretic Computational Construction Grammar

Victor J. Barres

In AAAI Spring Symposium on Computational Construction Grammar and Natural Language Understanding, 2017

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{barres2017tcg,
  title = {Template Construction Grammar: A Schema-Theoretic Computational Construction Grammar},
  author = {Barres, Victor J.},
  booktitle = {AAAI Spring Symposium on Computational Construction Grammar and Natural Language Understanding},
  year = {2017},
  url = {https://aaai.org/proceeding/02-spring-2017/},
  keywords = {cogsci}
}

2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

Hearing (rivaling) lips and seeing voices: how audiovisual interactions modulate perceptual stabilization in binocular rivalry

Manuel Vidal and Victor Barres

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014

DOI Bib HTML

@article{vidal2014hearing,
  title = {Hearing (rivaling) lips and seeing voices: how audiovisual interactions modulate perceptual stabilization in binocular rivalry},
  author = {Vidal, Manuel and Barres, Victor},
  journal = {Frontiers in Human Neuroscience},
  volume = {8},
  pages = {677},
  year = {2014},
  doi = {10.3389/fnhum.2014.00677},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00677},
  keywords = {cogsci}
}

Neuropsychologia

Language is handy but is it embodied?

Michael A. Arbib, Brad Gasser, and Victor Barres

Neuropsychologia, 2014

DOI Bib HTML

@article{arbib2014language,
  title = {Language is handy but is it embodied?},
  author = {Arbib, Michael A. and Gasser, Brad and Barres, Victor},
  journal = {Neuropsychologia},
  volume = {55},
  pages = {57--70},
  year = {2014},
  doi = {10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.11.004},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.11.004},
  keywords = {cogsci}
}

Neuroinformatics

Template Construction Grammar: From Visual Scene Description to Language Comprehension and Agrammatism

Victor Barres and Jinyong Lee

Neuroinformatics, 2014

DOI Bib HTML

@article{barres2014tcg,
  title = {Template Construction Grammar: From Visual Scene Description to Language Comprehension and Agrammatism},
  author = {Barres, Victor and Lee, Jinyong},
  journal = {Neuroinformatics},
  volume = {12},
  number = {1},
  pages = {181--208},
  year = {2014},
  doi = {10.1007/s12021-013-9197-y},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s12021-013-9197-y},
  keywords = {cogsci}
}

2013

Neural Networks

Synthetic event-related potentials: A computational bridge between neurolinguistic models and experiments

Victor Barres, Arthur Simons, and Michael A. Arbib

Neural Networks, 2013

DOI Bib HTML Code

@article{barres2013synthetic,
  title = {Synthetic event-related potentials: A computational bridge between neurolinguistic models and experiments},
  author = {Barres, Victor and Simons, Arthur and Arbib, Michael A.},
  journal = {Neural Networks},
  volume = {37},
  pages = {66--92},
  year = {2013},
  doi = {10.1016/j.neunet.2012.09.021},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2012.09.021},
  keywords = {cogsci}
}

2012

Perception

Hearing lips and (not) seeing voices: Audiovisual integration with the suppressed percept

Manuel Vidal and Victor Barres

Perception, 2012

Bib

@article{vidal2012hearing,
  title = {Hearing lips and (not) seeing voices: Audiovisual integration with the suppressed percept},
  author = {Vidal, Manuel and Barres, Victor},
  journal = {Perception},
  volume = {41},
  pages = {212},
  year = {2012},
  keywords = {cogsci}
}

2011

i-Perception

How Auditory Information Influences Volitional Control in Binocular Rivalry: Modulation of a Top-Down Attentional Effect

Manuel Vidal and Victor Barres

i-Perception, 2011

Bib

@article{vidal2011auditory,
  title = {How Auditory Information Influences Volitional Control in Binocular Rivalry: Modulation of a Top-Down Attentional Effect},
  author = {Vidal, Manuel and Barres, Victor},
  journal = {i-Perception},
  volume = {2},
  number = {8},
  pages = {839},
  year = {2011},
  keywords = {cogsci}
}