ISSE 2024: Keynote Announcement

The Systems Council is delighted to announce that Dr. Somayeh Sojoudi, Associate Professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, will give the keynote at the 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Systems Engineering (ISSE 2024) in Perugia!

Title: Navigating Non-Convexity: Developing Efficient Algorithms for Complex Systems

Abstract: Efficient computational methods with proven guarantees are essential for navigating the complexities and nonlinearities of real-world systems. While practitioners often rely on heuristic algorithms tailored for specific applications, their theoretical foundations remain unclear, limiting their use in safety-critical systems. This presentation aims to bridge this gap for non-convex machine learning problems, emphasizing the critical need for robustness in machine learning algorithms, particularly in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving and power systems. The talk will delve into cutting-edge developments in provably robust machine learning, presenting novel models supported by mathematical proofs of their robustness. Additionally, it will introduce optimization techniques designed to certify existing models. These methods leverage underlying problem structures to achieve state-of-the-art robustness and efficiency, promising breakthroughs in both reliability and computational effectiveness.

Bio: Somayeh Sojoudi is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. She is a Senior Associate Editor of IEEE Systems Journal. She has served as Associate Editor for the journals of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, Systems & Control Letters, IEEE Open Journal of Control Systems, and IEEE Access. She is a member of the conference editorial board of the IEEE Control Systems Society, and has also served as an Area Chair for NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR. She received several awards and honors, including NSF CAREER Award, ONR Young Investigator Award, INFORMS Optimization Society Prize for Young Researchers, INFORMS Energy Best Publication Award, INFORMS Data Mining Best Paper Award, and Best-of-the-Best conference paper award of IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting.