Prof. Qi Zhu of Northwestern University

Future connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) will employ complex sensing, computation, and communication components for their perception, planning, control, and coordination, and could operate in highly dynamic and uncertain environment with safety and security assurance. To realize this vision, we have to better understand and address the challenges from the “unknowns” – the unexpected disturbances from component failures, environment interferences, and malicious attacks, as well as the inherent uncertainties from dynamic inputs, model inaccuracies, and machine learning techniques (particularly those based on neural networks).

In this talk, I will discuss some of these challenges and present our recent work in this area, including 1) models and methods for analyzing system safety and applying adaptation strategies under bounded disturbances such as timing violations and soft errors, 2) algorithms and tools for formally verifying the safety of neural network controlled systems, and 3) a cross-layer framework for the modeling, simulation, synthesis and verification of connected vehicle applications, with the consideration of communication disturbances.

Biography:

Qi Zhu is an Associate Professor at the ECE Department in Northwestern University. He received a Ph.D. in EECS from University of California, Berkeley in 2008, and a B.E. in CS from Tsinghua University in 2003. His research interests include design automation for cyber-physical systems and Internet of Things, cyber-physical security, safe and secure machine learning for CPS, and system-on-chip design, with applications in domains such as automotive electronic systems, connected vehicles, and energy-efficient buildings. He received best paper awards at DAC 2006, DAC 2007, ICCPS 2013, and ACM TODAES 2016, NSF CAREER award in 2016, IEEE Technical Committee on Cyber-Physical Systems (TCCPS) Early-Career Award in 2017, and the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers. He is the Conference Chair of IEEE TCCPS, an Associate Editor for IEEE TCAD and IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications, the General Chair for the 15^th IEEE International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems, and the Program Chair for the 1^st and 2^nd ACM/IEEE Workshops on Design Automation for CPS and IoT.

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