Mini-Workshops

Visible to the public 

Mini-Workshops

All Mini-Workshops will run concurrently from 4:00 - 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, June 3.

1. Rethinking Socio-Cyber-Physical Systems of Tomorrow: Health, Security, Safety & Resilience
2. Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Engineering (TRASE)
3. Next Big Research Challenges in Cyber-Physical Systems

1.   Rethinking Socio-Cyber-Physical Systems of Tomorrow: Health, Security, Safety & Resilience - Marigold Plenary Room

Organizers: Naira Hovakimyan (UIUC), Tarek Abdelzaher (UIUC), Shreyas Sundaram (PU)

Abstract:

The holistic combination of artificial intelligence, communications and information technology defines our society as a large-scale complex socio-cyber-physical system (SCPS), with humans in the loop. However, the COVID-19 crisis has revealed the lack of resilience of SCPS, exposing the vulnerabilities from the perspective of health security, food safety and security, social security and many others. Meanwhile, the reliability and safety of SCPS is formidably threatened by the increasing interactions of human, social and physical activities and the increasing complexity, which leads to potential conflicts of service and functionality. Motivated by these uncovered problems, our objective in this workshop is to discuss the challenges of health, security, safety and resilience of SCPS, along the interdisciplinary lines of research between experts from social and behavioral sciences, psychology, communications, feedback control and hazard science.

Workshop Agenda:

4:00pm - 4:05pm: Introduction and Opening Remarks

  • Naira Hovakimyan (UIUC)

4:05pm - 4:35pm: Communication Authenticity (15-minute presentations)

  • Keri Stephens (University of Texas at Austin): Social Media and Mobile Communication During Crisis
  • Joshua Introne (Syracuse University): Online Dynamics of Misinformation

4:35pm - 5:05pm: Socio-Cyber-Physical System Resilience (15-minute presentations)

  • Katherine Lieberknecht (University of Texas at Austin): Understanding Urban Social–Ecological–Technical Systems: Disaster Resilience
  • Haizhong Wang (Oregon State University): Socially and Cognitively Aware Emergency Management Framework

5:05pm - 5:35pm: Socially Responsible Management (15-minute presentations)

  • Desheng Zhang (Rutgers University): Socially Aware Conflict Management Framework
  • Yanbing Mao (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign): Managing Infodemics to Enhance Health Resilience and Health Equality

5:35pm - 6:00pm: Panel Discussion (all speakers and organizers, moderated by Naira Hovakimyan)

  • Lessons Learned from SCPS under COVID-19 Crisis: AI Challenges, Humans’ Behavioral Challenges, Social Challenges

2.  Trustworthy Autonomous Systems Engineering (TRASE) - Lavender Plenary Room

Organizers: Bruno Sinopoli and Yevgeniy Vorobeychik

Abstract: Advances in AI technology, particularly perception and planning, have enabled unprecedented advances in autonomy, with autonomous systems playing an increasingly important role in day-to-day lives, with applications including IoT, drones, and autonomous vehicles. In nearly all applications, reliability, safety, and security of such systems is a critical consideration. For example, failures in IoT can result in infrastructure disruptions, and failures in autonomous cars can lead to congestion and crashes. While there have been extensive independent research threads on the subject of safety and reliability of specific sub-problems in autonomy, such as the problem of robust control, as well as recent considerations of robust AI-based perception, there has been scarcely any interdisciplinary endeavor to investigate this problem in end-to-end autonomy, where AI-based perception is integrated with planning and control in an open loop. This 2-hour workshop on Trustworth Autonomous Systems Engineering (TRASE) offers an opportunity to highlight state of the art research in trustworthy autonomous systems, as well as provide a vision for future foundational and applied advances in this critical area at the intersection of AI and CPS.

Draft Workshop Agenda:

4:00pm - 4:05pm: Introduction

  • Bruno Sinopoli, Das Family Distinguished Professor and Department Chair, Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis

4:05pm - 5:05pm: 20-minute presentations

  • Yevgeniy Vorobeychik, Associate Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis
  • Naira Hovakimyan, W. Grafton and Lillian B. Wilkins Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering, UIUC
  • Huei Peng, Roger L. McCarthy Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Director of Mcity, University of Michigan

5:05pm - 5:15pm: Break

5:15pm - Panel Discussion 35 min

  • Bruno Sinopoli (moderator)
  • Sankalp Bhan, Research Scientist at Amazon Prime Air
  • Dimitar Filev, Henry Ford Technical Fellow at Ford Motor Company
  • Sanjoy Baruah, Hugo F. & Ina Champ Urbauer Professor at Washington University in St Louis
  • Donald Wunsch II, Program Director, National Science Foundation

3. Next Big Research Challenges in Cyber-Physical Systems - Dandelion Plenary Room

Organizer: Miroslav Pajic and Saman Zonouz

Abstract: The National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated its Cyber-physical systems (CPS) program more than a decade ago. As a result, there have been many foundational solutions developed to address various research challenges in modeling, design, and control of trustworthy, real-time, and dependable cyber-physical platforms in different application domains. The proposed solutions in CPS technologies are transforming the way people interact with such engineered systems. While tremendous progress has been made in advancing CPS technologies, the demand for innovation across application domains is driving the need to accelerate research to keep pace.

To identify and prioritize the fundamental research challenges that need to be addressed, we organized a 1.5 days workshop in April, where experts from different CPS domains were invited to share their thoughts on the most important current challenges and directions. The main objective of the workshop was to identify the new and important areas, where CPS researchers might be better advised to focus on. More specifically, the attendees discussed i) what research challenges in CPS have been addressed the best over the last decade, ii) the most important challenges that the CPS community need to focus on now, iii) the most common lessons learned over the last decade of CPS research, and iv) the new solutions for the community for more effective technology transfers in coming years.

In this mini-workshop at NSF CPS PI Meeting, we plan to present the takeaways from the meeting in April. We will have short presentations (12 minutes each), followed by a panel discussion.

Speakers:

  • George Pappas (University of Pennsylvania)
  • Mani Srivastava (University of California, Los Angeles)
  • Alex Bayen (University of California, Berkeley)
  • John Baras (University of Maryland)
  • Jim Anderson (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
  • Missy Cummings (Duke University)