An optimized method for estimating path-ensemble averages using data from processes driven in opposite directions is presented. Based on this estimator, bidirectional expressions for reconstructing free energies and potentials of mean force from single-molecule force spectroscopy-valid for biasing potentials of arbitrary stiffness-are developed. Numerical simulations on a model potential indicate that these methods perform better than unidirectional strategies.Crooks' path-ensemble average theorem (Eq. 1) encompasses a set of exact results in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics pertinent to systems driven from thermal equilibrium by a time-dependent external potential [1]. These include Jarzynski's equality [2] and the Crooks fluctuation theorem [3], which relate equilibrium free energy differences to the nonequilibrium work distribution, as well as reweighting relations that allow one to recover arbitrary equilibrium ensemble averages from measurements of driven nonequilibrium processes [1]. Because of the intimate connection between such processes and molecular force spectroscopy, these theorems have been widely invoked to extract free energies and potentials of mean force (PMFs) from single-molecule pulling experiments [4][5][6][7][8].While formally correct, the practical utility of these relations is limited by the presence of exponential averages of the work, which are dominated by rare events and therefore have notoriously slow convergence properties [9]. In order to improve their convergence, strategies such as work-weighted trajectory sampling [10][11][12] have been proposed. Here we suggest another method to accelerate the convergence of these averages: including trajectories from the reverse process in the forward path-ensemble. This is motivated in part by the observation that the exponential average of the work in the forward process is dominated by those rare trajectories that resemble time-reversed counterparts ("conjugate twins") of typical trajectories generated by the reverse protocol [13]. Thus, our goals are to construct optimized forward pathensemble average estimators that explicitly include such trajectories, and apply them to the problem of estimating free energies and potentials of mean force from single-molecule pulling experiments.The starting point of our analysis is Crooks' path-ensemble average theorem, which relates the forward average of an arbitrary functional of the phase space trajectory Γ = {q(t), p (t)} to its work-weighted average in the reverse process, namely [1] (1)In the above, the forward average 〈…〉 F is an average over all trajectories (path-ensemble average) generated in the forward process, wherein an external parameter (e.g. the position of * Electronic Address: