The challenges posed by renewable energy and distributed electricity generation motivate the development of deep learning approaches to overcome the lack of flexibility of traditional methods in power grids use cases. The application of GNNs is particularly promising due to their ability to learn from graph-structured data present in power grids. Combined with RL, they can serve as control approaches to determine remedial grid actions. This review analyses the ability of GRL to capture the inherent graph structure of power grids to improve representation learning and decision making in different power grid use cases. It distinguishes between common problems in transmission and distribution grids and explores the synergy between RL and GNNs. In transmission grids, GRL typically addresses automated grid management and topology control, whereas on the distribution side, GRL concentrates more on voltage regulation. We analyzed the selected papers based on their graph structure and GNN model, the applied RL algorithm, and their overall contributions. Although GRL demonstrate adaptability in the face of unpredictable events and noisy or incomplete data, it primarily serves as a proof of concept at this stage. There are multiple open challenges and limitations that need to be addressed when considering the application of RL to real power grid operation.

Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has been driven by insights from neuroscience, particularly with the development of artificial neural networks (ANNs). This has significantly enhanced the replication of complex cognitive tasks such as vision and natural language processing. Despite these advances, ANNs struggle with continual learning, adaptable knowledge transfer, robustness, and resource efficiency - capabilities that biological systems handle seamlessly. Specifically, ANNs often overlook the functional and morphological diversity of the brain, hindering their computational capabilities. Furthermore, incorporating cell-type specific neuromodulatory effects into ANNs with neuronal heterogeneity could enable learning at two spatial scales: spiking behavior at the neuronal level, and synaptic plasticity at the circuit level, thereby potentially enhancing their learning abilities. In this article, we summarize recent bio-inspired models, learning rules and architectures and propose a biologically-informed framework for enhancing ANNs. Our proposed dual-framework approach highlights the potential of spiking neural networks (SNNs) for emulating diverse spiking behaviors and dendritic compartments to simulate morphological and functional diversity of neuronal computations. Finally, we outline how the proposed approach integrates brain-inspired compartmental models and task-driven SNNs, balances bioinspiration and complexity, and provides scalable solutions for pressing AI challenges, such as continual learning, adaptability, robustness, and resource-efficiency.

Integrated satellite, aerial, and terrestrial networks (ISATNs) represent a sophisticated convergence of diverse communication technologies to ensure seamless connectivity across different altitudes and platforms. This paper explores the transformative potential of integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) into ISATNs, leveraging advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to enhance these networks. We outline the current architecture of ISATNs and highlight the significant role LLMs can play in optimizing data flow, signal processing, and network management to advance 5G/6G communication technologies through advanced predictive algorithms and real-time decision-making. A comprehensive analysis of ISATN components is conducted, assessing how LLMs can effectively address traditional data transmission and processing bottlenecks. The paper delves into the network management challenges within ISATNs, emphasizing the necessity for sophisticated resource allocation strategies, traffic routing, and security management to ensure seamless connectivity and optimal performance under varying conditions. Furthermore, we examine the technical challenges and limitations associated with integrating LLMs into ISATNs, such as data integration for LLM processing, scalability issues, latency in decision-making processes, and the design of robust, fault-tolerant systems. The study also identifies key future research directions for fully harnessing LLM capabilities in ISATNs, which is crucial for enhancing network reliability, optimizing performance, and achieving a truly interconnected and intelligent global network system.

We propose a randomized physics-informed neural network (PINN) or rPINN method for uncertainty quantification in inverse partial differential equation (PDE) problems with noisy data. This method is used to quantify uncertainty in the inverse PDE PINN solutions. Recently, the Bayesian PINN (BPINN) method was proposed, where the posterior distribution of the PINN parameters was formulated using the Bayes' theorem and sampled using approximate inference methods such as the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) and variational inference (VI) methods. In this work, we demonstrate that HMC fails to converge for non-linear inverse PDE problems. As an alternative to HMC, we sample the distribution by solving the stochastic optimization problem obtained by randomizing the PINN loss function. The effectiveness of the rPINN method is tested for linear and non-linear Poisson equations, and the diffusion equation with a high-dimensional space-dependent diffusion coefficient. The rPINN method provides informative distributions for all considered problems. For the linear Poisson equation, HMC and rPINN produce similar distributions, but rPINN is on average 27 times faster than HMC. For the non-linear Poison and diffusion equations, the HMC method fails to converge because a single HMC chain cannot sample multiple modes of the posterior distribution of the PINN parameters in a reasonable amount of time.

The true power of computational research typically can lay in either what it accomplishes or what it enables others to accomplish. In this work, both avenues are simultaneously embraced across several distinct efforts existing at three general scales of abstractions of what a material is - atomistic, physical, and design. At each, an efficient materials informatics infrastructure is being built from the ground up based on (1) the fundamental understanding of the underlying prior knowledge, including the data, (2) deployment routes that take advantage of it, and (3) pathways to extend it in an autonomous or semi-autonomous fashion, while heavily relying on artificial intelligence (AI) to guide well-established DFT-based ab initio and CALPHAD-based thermodynamic methods. The resulting multi-level discovery infrastructure is highly generalizable as it focuses on encoding problems to solve them easily rather than looking for an existing solution. To showcase it, this dissertation discusses the design of multi-alloy functionally graded materials (FGMs) incorporating ultra-high temperature refractory high entropy alloys (RHEAs) towards gas turbine and jet engine efficiency increase reducing CO2 emissions, as well as hypersonic vehicles. It leverages a new graph representation of underlying mathematical space using a newly developed algorithm based on combinatorics, not subject to many problems troubling the community. Underneath, property models and phase relations are learned from optimized samplings of the largest and highest quality dataset of HEA in the world, called ULTERA. At the atomistic level, a data ecosystem optimized for machine learning (ML) from over 4.5 million relaxed structures, called MPDD, is used to inform experimental observations and improve thermodynamic models by providing stability data enabled by a new efficient featurization framework.

In recent years, multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have made significant strides by training on vast high-quality image-text datasets, enabling them to generally understand images well. However, the inherent difficulty in explicitly conveying fine-grained or spatially dense information in text, such as masks, poses a challenge for MLLMs, limiting their ability to answer questions requiring an understanding of detailed or localized visual elements. Drawing inspiration from the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) concept, this paper proposes a new visual prompt approach to integrate fine-grained external knowledge, gleaned from specialized vision models (e.g., instance segmentation/OCR models), into MLLMs. This is a promising yet underexplored direction for enhancing MLLMs' performance. Our approach diverges from concurrent works, which transform external knowledge into additional text prompts, necessitating the model to indirectly learn the correspondence between visual content and text coordinates. Instead, we propose embedding fine-grained knowledge information directly into a spatial embedding map as a visual prompt. This design can be effortlessly incorporated into various MLLMs, such as LLaVA and Mipha, considerably improving their visual understanding performance. Through rigorous experiments, we demonstrate that our method can enhance MLLM performance across nine benchmarks, amplifying their fine-grained context-aware capabilities.

One of the purposes of perception is to bridge between sensors and conceptual understanding. Marr's Primal Sketch combined initial edge-finding with multiple downstream processes to capture aspects of visual perception such as grouping and stereopsis. Given the progress made in multiple areas of AI since then, we have developed a new framework inspired by Marr's work, the Hybrid Primal Sketch, which combines computer vision components into an ensemble to produce sketch-like entities which are then further processed by CogSketch, our model of high-level human vision, to produce both more detailed shape representations and scene representations which can be used for data-efficient learning via analogical generalization. This paper describes our theoretical framework, summarizes several previous experiments, and outlines a new experiment in progress on diagram understanding.

Robotic weed flaming is a new and environmentally friendly approach to weed removal in the agricultural field. Using a mobile manipulator equipped with a flamethrower, we design a new system and algorithm to enable effective weed flaming, which requires robotic manipulation with a soft and deformable end effector, as the thermal coverage of the flame is affected by dynamic or unknown environmental factors such as gravity, wind, atmospheric pressure, fuel tank pressure, and pose of the nozzle. System development includes overall design, hardware integration, and software pipeline. To enable precise weed removal, the greatest challenge is to detect and predict dynamic flame coverage in real time before motion planning, which is quite different from a conventional rigid gripper in grasping or a spray gun in painting. Based on the images from two onboard infrared cameras and the pose information of the flamethrower nozzle on a mobile manipulator, we propose a new dynamic flame coverage model. The flame model uses a center-arc curve with a Gaussian cross-section model to describe the flame coverage in real time. The experiments have demonstrated the working system and shown that our model and algorithm can achieve a mean average precision (mAP) of more than 76\% in the reprojected images during online prediction.

We consider the problem where an agent aims to combine the views and insights of different experts' models. Specifically, each expert proposes a diffusion process over a finite time horizon. The agent then combines the experts' models by minimising the weighted Kullback-Leibler divergence to each of the experts' models. We show existence and uniqueness of the barycentre model and proof an explicit representation of the Radon-Nikodym derivative relative to the average drift model. We further allow the agent to include their own constraints, which results in an optimal model that can be seen as a distortion of the experts' barycentre model to incorporate the agent's constraints. Two deep learning algorithms are proposed to find the optimal drift of the combined model, allowing for efficient simulations. The first algorithm aims at learning the optimal drift by matching the change of measure, whereas the second algorithm leverages the notion of elicitability to directly estimate the value function. The paper concludes with a extended application to combine implied volatility smiles models that were estimated on different datasets.

Poverty has a significant geographic component, which has been studied by human geographers and developmental economists, giving rise to techniques such as small area estimation. With the availability of accurate and high-resolution data, it is possible to produce poverty maps that display the spatial distribution of poverty, and this has been instrumental in deciphering its determinants (Gauci, 2005). The availability of high-resolution geographically specified socio-economic data has opened avenues for more precise analysis that target areas of poverty. Furthermore, the accumulation of data over time has allowed for the inclusion of temporal dynamics in understanding the persistent nature of some impoverished areas. While pockets of poverty can be spatially defined, understanding the social, economic, and physical processes that create self-perpetuating geographies of poverty remain a pressing challenge, aspects of this geography have received attention in various literature (Bird et al., 2010), involving spatial poverty traps (Jalan, Ravallion, et al., 1997), crime (Hipp, 2016), and economic aid (Briggs, 2018).