Sivaranjani Seetharaman (Purdue): AI+Science Schmidt Fellows Speaker Series
Organized by the University of Chicago’s Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
Agenda
4:00pm – 4:45pm: Presentation
4:45pm – 5:00pm: Q&A
5:00pm – 5:30pm: Reception
Meeting location
William Eckhardt Research Center. Room 401
5640 S Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637
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Abstract: Networked dynamical systems, such as infrastructure networks, supply chains, biological networks, social networks, and so on, are central to our lives. Yet, they often fail catastrophically when faced with large disturbances arising from extreme events. A wide range of tools from systems theory, such as adaptive control, as well as from AI/machine learning, have been developed to guarantee robustness in these settings. However, they do not scale well, lack guarantees on resulting solutions, and cannot deal with large disturbances that push systems into far-from-equilibrium regimes in which they are not typically designed to operate. In this context, this talk will address the problem of ensuring operational resilience of networked dynamical systems to extreme events/shocks. The key idea is that control algorithms that capture and utilize physical properties or constraints — such as energy dissipation, monotonicity, conservation laws, or symmetries — can lead to scalable designs that can adapt to large disturbances and achieve operational resilience. Specifically, we will discuss (i) physics-informed approaches to learn models of these systems capturing control-relevant properties like dissipativity in nonlinear and non-equilibrium settings, and (ii) scalable and compositional learning-based control designs that leverage these properties to provably guarantee safety and operational resilience.
Bio: Sivaranjani Seetharaman is an Assistant Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Texas A&M University, and the Texas A&M Research Institute for Foundations of Interdisciplinary Data Science (FIDS). She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Notre Dame, and her Master’s and undergraduate degrees, also in Electrical Engineering, from the Indian Institute of Science, and PES Institute of Technology, respectively Sivaranjani has been a recipient of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE) Energy Systems Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the Schlumberger Foundation Faculty for the Future fellowship, the Zonta International Amelia Earhart fellowship, and the Notre Dame Ethical Leaders in STEM fellowship. She was named among MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 (TR35) in 2023, and the MIT Rising Stars in EECS in 2018. Her research interests lie at the intersection of control theory and machine learning in networks.
Parking
Campus North Parking
5505 S Ellis Ave
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