News
August 2024
Safe Reinforcement Learning tutorial at IJCAI 2024 Slides
Mar 2024
Join us at IJCAI 2024 Workshop on Trustworthy Interactive Decision Making with Foundation Models (Call for Contributions)
Jan 2024
Our project on LLMs for Supply Chain Cybersecurity, in collaboration with Prof. Peter Beling, has been selected for support by Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI).
Nov 2023
Our project on safe RL for power systems, in collaboration with Prof. Javad Lavaei, has been selected for support by NSF under the Safe Learning-Enabled System Program.
Aug 2023
Our project on Safe RL for Interactive Systems with Stakeholder Alignment has been selected for support by Amazon-VT Initiative in Efficient and Robust Machine Learning.
Aug 2023
Paper on Optimization Autoformalism that uses large language models to craft optimization solutions for decision-making
Mar 2023
Paper on certified robustness for neural ODE accepted in IEEE Control Systems Letters (L-CSS)
Mar 2023
Paper on derivative-free meta blackbox (nonconvex) optimization on manifold at L4DC 2023 (oral presentation)
Mar 2023
Two papers theoretical analysis of Sobolev training and decision-focused variational inequality at IFAC World Congress 2023
Feb 2023
One paper adversarial ML (sifting out clean data from poisoned data) at USENIX Security 2023
Jan 2023
Three papers on meta-safe reinforcement learning (spotlight), model-agnostic data valuation (spotlight), and adversarial ML (certified robustness against UAP/backdoors) at ICLR 2023
Nov 2022
Three papers at AAAI on winning the CityLearn Challenge (oral), approximation/statistical properties of solution functions (oral), and nonstationary risk-sensitive RL (oral)
Jun 2022
Paper on dynamic regret for online optimization "Dynamic Regret Bounds for Online Nonconvex Optimization" to appear in IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems
Mar 2022
Paper on general bi-level optimization "Iterative Implicit Gradients for Nonconvex Optimization with Variational Inequality Constraints"
Mar 2022
Thanks The Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI) for supporting our research
Mar 2022
Presentation at PMS 406 Autonomy MRE workshop on assured RL for dynamical systems
Feb 2022
Paper on learning under specifications "Learning Neural Networks under Input-Output Specifications" (arXiv) to appear in ACC 2022
Jan 2022
Paper on adversarial ML "Adversarial Unlearning of Backdoors via Implicit Hypergradient" (arXiv) accepted to ICLR 2022
Dec 2021
Paper on safe RL "Recurrent Neural Network Controllers Synthesis with Stability Guarantees for Partially Observed Systems" (arXiv) to appear in AAAI 2022
Dec 2021
Paper on control by proxy "Controlling Smart Inverters using Proxies: A Chance-Constrained DNN-based Approach" (arXiv) to appear in IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid
Nov 2021
Two teams that I led (ROLEVT & ZoRL) jointly won the 1st place in the CityLearn Challenge 2021. Congrats to team members: Vanshaj Khattar, Qasim Wani, Zhiyao Chang, and Mingyu Kim
Nov 2021
New paper on adversarial ML "Adversarial Unlearning of Backdoors via Implicit Hypergradient" (arXiv)
Nov 2021
Talk on assured RL for energy systems at C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute (video)
Oct 2021
My group will give an oral presentation on implicit RL in SECC 2021
Oct 2021
New paper on implicit RL "Zeroth-Order Implicit Reinforcement Learning for Sequential Decision Making in Distributed Control Systems"
Oct 2021
New paper on assured learning of neural networks "Learning Neural Networks under Input-Output Specifications"
Sep 2021
New paper on dynamic regret for online optimization "Dynamic Regret Bounds for Online Nonconvex Optimization"
Sep 2021
New paper on safe reinforcement learning "Recurrent Neural Network Controllers Synthesis with Stability Guarantees for Partially Observed Systems" (arXiv)
Sep 2021
I will serve as an Associate Editor for IEEE Systems Journal
Jun 2021
Thanks C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute for the grant to study RL for resilient power systems (with Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and Prof. Bo Li)
Jun 2021
New paper on data quality management "A Unified Framework for Task-Driven Data Quality Management" (arXiv)
Jun 2021
I received the SCEEE Research Initiation Grant to study safe and resilient AI for networked dynamical systems
May 2021
New paper on control by proxy "Controlling Smart Inverters using Proxies: A Chance-Constrained DNN-based Approach" (arXiv)
May 2021
Paper on safe imitation learning "Imitation Learning with Stability and Safety Guarantees" (arXiv) to appear in IEEE Control Systems Letters
Jan 2021
Paper on online nonconvex optimization "Diminishing Regret for Online Nonconvex Optimization" to appear in 2021 American Control Conference
Jan 2021
I will teach ECE5984 Special topic: Optimization Theory for ML (spring, 2021)
Dec 2020
New paper on safe imitation learning "Imitation Learning with Stability and Safety Guarantees" (arXiv)
Dec 2020
Paper on power grid cybersecurity "Boundary Defense Against Cyber Threat for Power System State Estimation" (pdf) to appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security
Dec 2020
Paper on reinforcement learning "Stability-certified reinforcement learning: A control-theoretic perspective" to appear in IEEE Access
Dec 2020
Paper on robust graph convolutional network "Power up! Robust Graph Convolutional Network via Graph Powering" accepted to AAAI 2021
Sep 2020
See here a 5-minutes introduction to my research presented at the Engineering Faculty organization (EFO) faculty meeting, Virginia Tech
Sep 2020
Paper on reinforcement learning for building control to appear in ACM International Workshop on Reinforcement Learning for Energy Management (RLEM'20) "Towards Off-policy Evaluation as a Prerequisite for Real-world Reinforcement Learning in Building Control"
Sep 2020
Invited presentation at the 2020 CPES & PEC conference on "Adversarially robust learning and control for power grid"
Aug 2020
Paper on deep learning for smart inverter control to appear in IEEE SmartGridComm'20 "Deep Learning for Reactive Power Control of Smart Inverters under Communication Constraints"
Aug 2020
I will teach ECE4424/CS4824: Machine learning (fall, 2020)
Aug 2020
Invited presentation at the IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications (CCTA) on "Adversarial machine learning for energy systems"
Aug 2020
Paper on reinforcement learning for thermodynamic systems to appear in Applied Energy "Control of superheat of organic Rankine cycle under transient heat source based on deep reinforcement learning"
Jul 2020
Thanks NSF for supporting our proposal Machine Learning for Communication-Cognizant Smart Inverter Control with Prof. Vassilis Kekatos
Apr 2020
Conversation with Berkeley IEOR (interview article)
Jan 2020
The paper "Conic Relaxations of Power System Optimization: Theory and Algorithms" to appear in European Journal of Operational Research
Aug 2019
New paper on cybersecurity for power grid "Boundary Defense against Cyber Threat for Power System Operation" (Supplementary material)
Jul 2019
Paper to appear in Proc. 58th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control "Towards Robust and Scalable Power System State Estimation"
May 2019
New paper on robust graph convolutional network "Power up! Robust Graph Convolutional Network against Evasion Attacks based on Graph Powering"
Feb 2019
New paper on power system state estimation "Scalable and robust state estimation from abundant but untrusted data"
Oct 2018
New paper on stability certfied reinforcement learning "Stability-certified reinforcement learning: a control-theoretic perspective"
Aug 2018
Presentations at the International Conference on Applied Energy: "BISCUIT: Building Intelligent System Customer Investment Tools" (paper | slides) and "Advanced Building Control via Deep Reinforcement Learning" (paper)
Jul 2018
Presentation at the 23rd International Symposium on Mathematical Programming, Bordeaux, France: "Vulnerability analysis and robustification of power grid state estimation" (slides)
Jun 2018
New paper on power system vulnerability analysis "Power Grid AC-based State Estimation: Vulnerability Analysis Against Cyber Attacks" accepted in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control
Mar 2018
New paper to guarantee safety of smooth RL in real-world systems like power grids: "Control-theoretic analysis of smoothness for stability-certified reinforcement learning"
Mar 2018
New paper on observer design for large-scale nonlinear systems: "Multiplier-based observer design for large-scale Lipschitz systems"
Jan 2018
We are organizing an international workshop on "AI for energy-cyber-physical systems" as part of the International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE 2018). See here the CFP
Dec 2017
I have finished my PhD thesis: Data-efficient Analytics for Optimal Human-Cyber-Physical Systems
Nov 2017
Centerline has reported our IEQ Bot in its November issue: "CBE Panel Session Explores Innovative Methods for Monitoring Indoor Environments"
Nov 2017
Paper on our new IEQ Bot "Automated mobile sensing: Towards high-granularity agile indoor environmental quality monitoring" accepted by Building and Environment (paper | slide | code)
Oct 2017
INFORMS invited talk on "Robustness Analysis of Power Grid under False Data Attacks Against AC State Estimation" at Houston, Texas. Panelist in the Industrial Advisory Board meeting at the Center of the Built Environment, "IEQ Bot", Berkeley, California
Oct 2017
New paper on power system vulnerability analysis "Power Grid AC-based State Estimation: Vulnerability Analysis Against Cyber Attacks"
Oct 2017
Organization of the upcoming panel session "From clean energy research into innovation" at Applied Energy Symposium and Forum (REM2017)
Oct 2017
Berkeley Engineer magzine featured an article "Brains for buildings, packaged in a smart briefcase" on our Building-in-Briefcase sensor platform
Sep 2017
Three papers "Distributed energy resource integration by dispatch and retail optimization", "WinIPS: An WiFi-based non-intrusive indoor positioning system enabling online radio map construction" and "Review of microgrid development in the United States and China and lessons learned for China" accepted in IEEE PES ISGT-Asia (2017), IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and Applied Energy Symposium and Forum (REM2017)
Aug 2017
Two papers "A semidefinite programming relaxation under false data injection attacks against power grid AC state estimation" and "Indoor environmental quality monitoring by autonomous mobile sensing" accepted in Allerton (2017) and ACM BuildSys (2017)
Aug 2017
Oral presentation of paper Inverse reinforcement learning via deep Gaussian Process at UAI 2017 (slides and a blog from Daniel Seita), Sydney, Australia
June 2017
IEEE Spectrum featured an article What Does Your Smart Meter Know About You? on my recent work Virtual occupancy sensing: Using smart meters to indicate your presence
June 2017
CO2Meter.com featured an article CO2 Sensor Occupancy Detection on my work Sensing by proxy: Occupancy detection based on indoor CO2 concentration (best paper award)
June 2017
Paper "Inverse reinforcement learning via deep Gaussian Process" (paper | code | supplementary) accepted for oral presentation in UAI 2017, Sydney, Australia
June 2017
Our proposal for "Social Game for Smart Building Energy Efficiency" accepted (Total: $14,000, duration 1 year, with Ioannis Konstantakopoulos)
May 2017
Three papers "Microgrid to enable optimal distributed energy retail and end-user demand response", "A Robust Utility Learning Framework via Inverse Optimization", and "Measuring fine-grained Metro interchange time via smartphones" accepted in Applied Energy, TCST, and Transportation Research Part C
May 2017
Talk at ACC, Seattle, on Leveraging correlations in utility learning (slides)
Mar 2017
Paper Virtual occupancy sensing: Using smart meters to indicate your presence accepted in TMC
Dec 2016
My proposal for Energy Utopia is awarded with the Student Technology Fund of $3000
Nov 2016
Our paper "MetroEye: Towards a fine-grained passenger tracking under the ground" won the Best Paper Runner-up Award at MobiQuitous 2016 (paper | poster)
Nov 2016
We have organized the first international workshop on smart building collocated with IEEE SmartGridComm in November, Sydney! (slides for keynotes are now available HERE). 
Feb 2016
I'm teaching the innovation course at Berkeley, EE 16B: Designing Information Devices and Systems II as a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI), together with Prof. Anant Sahai and Prof. Michel Maharbiz
Sept 2015
We are awarded with the Best Paper Award for the paper "Sensing by Proxy" (paper | poster). News covered by SinBerBEST, homepage of EECS, UC Berkeley, and News Letter of CITRIS
July 2014
Our paper "SoundLoc: Accurate room-level indoor localization using acoustic signatures"(joint work with Ruoxi Jia and Prof. Costas Spanos) has been featured in MIT Technology Review: An Indoor Positioning System Based On Echolocation