February 26
@
4:00 PM
–
5:00 PM
The ME 903: Graduate Student Lecture Series features campus and visiting speakers who present on a variety of research topics in the field of mechanical engineering. Professor Evangelos Theodorou is a professor at Georgia Tech University.
Presentation Title: Optimization for Decision-Making in the Era of Artificial Intelligence.
Abstract: Optimization-based decision-making is at the core of autonomy and planning systems with applications in various domains of science and engineering from aerospace systems and robotics to networked and large-scale control. In this talk, I will give an overview of algorithms for decision-making and discuss use-cases and relevant applications. The topics include stochastic optimization algorithms such as Model Predictive Path Integral Control and its variations with applications to single agent system control, Distributed Optimization Architectures for multi-agent swarm control in the presence of uncertainty, and Deep-Learning Aided optimization algorithms for fast and scalable distributed optimization problems. If time permits, I will also cover stochastic optimal control algorithms with applications in the areas of Generative Artificial Intelligence and diffusions models on graphs.
Bio: Evangelos A. Theodorou is an Associate Professor with the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also the director of the Autonomous Control and Decision Systems Laboratory and an Amazon Scholar. Dr. Theodorou is affiliated with the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Machines and the Center for Machine Learning Research at Georgia Institute of Technology. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering, from the Technical University of Crete (TUC), Greece in 2001 and three MSc degrees in Production Engineering from TUC in 2003, Computer Science and Engineering from University of Minnesota in 2007, and Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2010. In 2011, he graduated with his PhD in Computer Science from USC. From 2011 to 2013, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington. Dr. Theodorou is the recipient of the King-Sun Fu best paper award of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics in 2012 and recipient of several best paper awards and nominations in machine learning and robotics conferences. His research spans the areas of stochastic optimal control theory, machine learning, dynamic and distributed optimization with applications to robotics, autonomy, and large-scale systems.