Autonomous Research Agents

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Overview

Autonomous research agents use language models to plan and carry out research tasks, from literature search and hypothesis generation to coding, experiments, analysis, and reporting. Common approaches include tool-using coding agents, teams of specialized agents, persistent memory, and training with supervised or reinforcement learning; execution harnesses and formal or domain-specific checks help constrain their work. Agents can perform well on bounded, executable tasks such as model optimization, code reproduction, and formal proof search, but open-ended research remains harder, especially when novelty or scientific validity is difficult to measure. A central challenge is ensuring that reported claims follow from reliable experiments and evidence, which motivates independent verification, held-out evaluation, provenance tracking, and continued human oversight.

Latest papers

CardsList

324 papers60 papers in the last four weeks, up 62% on the four weeks before. 0.3% of all new papers.

  1. The Agentic Researcher: A Practical Guide to AI-Assisted Research in Mathematics and Machine Learning

    Mar 16, 2026Max Zimmer, Nico Pelleriti, Christophe Roux +1AI-Assisted Scientific ResearchAutonomous Research Agents

    Department for AI in Society, Science, and Technology, Zuse Institute Berlin, Germany · Institute of Mathematics, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

  2. MiroThinker-1.7 & H1: Towards Heavy-Duty Research Agents via Verification

    Mar 16, 2026MiroMind Team, S. Bai, L. Bing +41Autonomous Research AgentsLong-Horizon LLM Agents

  3. An End-to-end Architecture for Collider Physics and Beyond

    Mar 15, 2026Shi Qiu, Zeyu Cai, Jiashen Wei +7Autonomous Research AgentsAI Agents for Scientific Discovery

    School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China · Center for High Energy Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China · School of Physics, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China +3

  4. Autonomous Agents Coordinating Distributed Discovery Through Emergent Artifact Exchange

    Mar 15, 2026Fiona Y. Wang, Lee Marom, Subhadeep Pal +4Autonomous Scientific DiscoveryAutonomous Research Agents

    Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (LAMM), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA · Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA +3

  5. ClimateAgents: A Multi-Agent Research Assistant for Social-Climate Dynamics Analysis

    Mar 14, 2026Shan ShanAutonomous Research AgentsData Analysis Agents

  6. PostTrainBench: Can LLM Agents Automate LLM Post-Training?

    Mar 9, 2026Ben Rank, Hardik Bhatnagar, Ameya Prabhu +4LLM Post-TrainingAutonomous Research Agents

    ELLIS Institute Tübingen · Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems · Tübingen AI Center +2

  7. SynPlanResearch-R1: Encouraging Tool Exploration for Deep Research with Synthetic Plans

    Mar 9, 2026Hansi Zeng, Zoey Li, Yifan Gao +7Synthetic Data Generation for LLM AgentsLLM Agent Training

    University of Massachusetts Amherst · Amazon · University of Montreal +2

  8. AutoResearch-RL: Perpetual Self-Evaluating Reinforcement Learning Agents for Autonomous Neural Architecture Discovery

    Mar 7, 2026Nilesh Jain, Rohit Yadav, Sagar Kotian +1Autonomous Research AgentsAutonomous Experimentation

    Yale · Google Cloud · Stanford +5

  9. ResearchEnvBench: Benchmarking Agents on Environment Synthesis for Research Code Execution

    Mar 6, 2026Yubang Wang, Chenxi Zhang, Bowen Chen +7AI Agent BenchmarksAutonomous Research Agents

    Shanghai Innovation Institution · College of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, Fudan University · OpenMOSS +5

  10. DOVA: Deliberation-First Multi-Agent Orchestration for Autonomous Research Automation

    Mar 4, 2026Aaron Shen, Alfred ShenMulti-Agent OrchestrationAutonomous Research Agents

    University of California, Berkeley, USA · Amazon Web Services, USA

  11. Catalyst-Agent: Autonomous heterogeneous catalyst screening with an LLM Agent

    Mar 1, 2026Achuth Chandrasekhar, Janghoon Ock, Amir Barati FarimaniLLM Agent OrchestrationMaterials Science

    Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA · Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA · Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA +3

  12. Super Research: Answering Highly Complex Questions with Large Language Models through Super Deep and Super Wide Research

    Feb 28, 2026Yubo Dong, Nianhao You, Yuxuan Hou +5Autonomous Research AgentsLLM Evaluation

    College of Computer Science and Technology · Ant Group, Hangzhou, China

  13. MiroFlow: Towards High-Performance and Robust Open-Source Agent Framework for General Deep Research Tasks

    Feb 26, 2026Shiqian Su, Sen Xing, Xuan Dong +13Autonomous Research AgentsLLM Agent Orchestration

    Tsinghua University · MiroMind AI · National University of Singapore +1

  14. Search More, Think Less: Rethinking Long-Horizon Agentic Search for Efficiency and Generalization

    Feb 26, 2026Qianben Chen, Tianrui Qin, King Zhu +21Agentic SearchLong-Horizon LLM Agents

  15. Vibe Researching as Wolf Coming: Can AI Agents with Skills Replace or Augment Social Scientists?

    Feb 25, 2026Yongjun ZhangHuman-AI CollaborationAutonomous Research Agents

    Department of Sociology and Institute for Advanced Computational Science, Stony Brook University.

  16. Aletheia tackles FirstProof autonomously

    Feb 24, 2026Tony Feng, Junehyuk Jung, Sang-hyun Kim +14LLM Mathematical ReasoningAutonomous Research Agents

    Google DeepMind · UC Berkeley · Brown University +7

  17. From Agent-Only Social Networks to Autonomous Scientific Research: Lessons from OpenClaw and Moltbook, and the Architecture of ClawdLab and Beach.Science

    Feb 23, 2026Lukas Weidener, Marko Brkić, Phillip Lee +3Autonomous Research AgentsAI Agents for Scientific Discovery

  18. How to Train Your Deep Research Agent? Prompt, Reward, and Policy Optimization in Search-R1

    Feb 23, 2026Yinuo Xu, Shuo Lu, Jianjie Cheng +5RL for LLM AgentsAutonomous Research Agents

    NLPR & MAIS, CASIA · School of AI, UCAS · Meituan Inc.

  19. InfEngine: A Self-Verifying and Self-Optimizing Intelligent Engine for Infrared Radiation Computing

    Feb 22, 2026Kun Ding, Jian Xu, Ying Wang +2Scientific Workflow AutomationScientific Code Generation

    State Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

  20. ResearchGym: Evaluating Language Model Agents on Real-World AI Research

    Feb 16, 2026Aniketh Garikaparthi, Manasi Patwardhan, Arman CohanAI Agent BenchmarksAutonomous Research Agents

    TCS Research · Yale University

  21. El Agente Quntur: A research collaborator agent for quantum chemistry

    Feb 4, 2026Juan B. Pérez-Sánchez, Yunheng Zou, Jorge A. Campos-Gonzalez-Angulo +12AI Agents for Scientific DiscoveryComputational Quantum Chemistry

    Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto, 80 St. George St., Toronto, ON M5S 3H6, Canada · Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, W1140-108 College St., Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus, Toronto, ON M5G 0C6, Canada · Acceleration Consortium, 700 University Ave., Toronto, ON M7A 2S4, Canada +6

  22. PaperScout: An Autonomous Agent for Academic Paper Search with Process-Aware Sequence-Level Policy Optimization

    Jan 15, 2026Tingyue Pan, Jie Ouyang, Mingyue Cheng +7Agentic RLPolicy Optimization

    State Key Lab of Cognitive Intelligence, University of Science and Technology of China

  23. AI Scientists for Building Virtual-Cell Models

    Aug 4, 2025Xiangru Tang, Jiapeng Chen, Daniel Shao +12AI Agents for Scientific DiscoveryAutonomous Research Agents

    Yale University · University of Pennsylvania · Helmholtz Zentrum München +3

  24. Neural Architecture Discovery via Autonomous Evolution

    Jul 24, 2025Weixian Xu, Yixiu Liu, Yang Nan +4Autonomous Research AgentsAI Agents for Scientific Discovery

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University · SII · GAIR +1