Scalable Optimization, Learning, And Robustness for Intelligent Systems

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Johns Hopkins University

SOLARIS LAB

Scalable Optimization, Learning, And Robustness for Intelligent Systems

Innovating at the intersection of Physics, AI, and Engineering.

Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.

— Isaac Asimov

Solaris Lab group
Partners in discovery

Sponsors & Affiliations

We gratefully acknowledge the institutions and programs that support and connect our work.

From the lab

Latest News

Hackathon

Pietro at the Tesseract Hackathon 2026

Pietro took part in the Tesseract Hackathon 2026 with FIDE—Fiber-Informed Differentiable Experimental Design—working on optimal experimental design for systems observed through aggregate measurements.

Paper

Eight SOLARIS Papers Accepted at CDC 2026

SOLARIS will have a strong presence at the 65th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control in Honolulu. Congratulations to Liang, Pietro, Honghui, and everyone across the lab and our collaborator network behind this outstanding collective achievement.

View the eight-paper lineup
  1. Learning to Control PDEs with Differentiable Predictive Control and Time-Integrated Neural Operators

    Dibakar, Ján, and Somdatta

  2. SCORE: Statistical Certification of Regions of Attraction via Extreme Value Theory

    Pietro, Panos, and Ján

  3. Fixed-time-stable ODE Representation of Lasso

    Liang, Yunhong, Wallace, Efstathios, Richard, and Ján

    Also accepted as an IEEE Control Systems Letters paper.
  4. Stability Enhanced Gaussian Process Variational Autoencoders

    Carl, Jichen, Ethan, and Ján

  5. Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Differentiable Predictive Control for Underground Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Systems

    Honghui, Ján, Yury, and Ján

  6. Safe Receding Horizon Mixed-Integer Differentiable Predictive Control for Degradation-Aware Battery Dispatch

    Eshagh, Ján, and Ben

  7. Koopman Meets Discrete-Time Control Barrier Functions: A Linear Model Predictive Control Framework

    Shuo, Liang, Dawei, Ján, and Calin

  8. Polynomial Parametric Koopman Operators for Stochastic MPC

    Efstathios, Wallace, Liang, Ján, and Richard

We gratefully acknowledge support from the U.S. DOE Office of Science, ASCR programme, through the SciDAC Institute LEADS, and from the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

Paper

Honghui's First Journal Paper

Congratulations to Honghui on his first journal paper, “Accelerating Underground Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Scheduling with Decision-Focused Learning,” now published in IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy.

Grant

DOE Genesis Mission Award

A Johns Hopkins team led by Ján received a $750,000 Phase I award for “From Chip to Chiller: Verifiable Edge AI Agents for Data Center Thermal Management.” The project will develop real-time AI agents that reduce cooling energy while maintaining reliable data-center operation.

Paper

Three SOLARIS Papers at IFAC 2026

Three papers from the group were presented at the 23rd IFAC World Congress in Busan, spanning differentiable control for data-center cooling and mixed-integer optimal control, and time-certified Koopman NMPC. Congratulations to Liang and all our collaborators.

View the three-paper lineup
  1. Data Center Chiller Plant Optimization via Mixed-Integer Nonlinear Differentiable Predictive Control

    Ján, Cary, Elad, Martin, Aaron, and Ján

  2. Learning to Solve Parametric Mixed-Integer Optimal Control Problems via Differentiable Predictive Control

    Ján, Shahriar, Martin, Martin, and Ján

  3. Time-Certified and Efficient NMPC via Koopman Operator

    Liang, Yunhong, Bo, Kangyu, and Ján

Workshop

Physics Meets Data Workshop at IFAC 2026

Ján co-organized the full-day workshop “Physics Meets Data: Learning, Optimization, and Control” at the IFAC World Congress in Busan, combining invited talks with hands-on sessions in physics-informed machine learning.

Grant

NSF Funding for AI-Driven Autonomous Laboratories

Ján is part of the Johns Hopkins AIMD-Net team building a network of AI-driven autonomous laboratories for faster materials discovery. The four-year programme is supported by a $20 million National Science Foundation grant.

Talk

Four Invited Talks Across Germany

Ján shared SOLARIS research in a four-stop invited-talk series at Ruhr University Bochum, TU Dortmund, TU Darmstadt, and the 17th World Congress on Computational Mechanics in Munich.

View the itinerary
  1. 17th World Congress on Computational Mechanics

    July 20 · Munich, Germany

  2. Technical University Darmstadt

    July 16 · Darmstadt, Germany

    Scientific Machine Learning for PDE Control and Mixed-Integer Optimization
  3. Technical University Dortmund

    July 14 · Dortmund, Germany

  4. Ruhr University Bochum

    July 12 · Bochum, Germany

Talk

Poster Presentation

Pietro presented the poster `CINOC: Cardinality-Invariant Neural Operator Policies for Scalable PDE Control` at ICML 2026.

Talk

Tutorial

Ján presented the tutorial `Scientific Machine Learning for Modeling, Optimization, and Control` at L4DC 2026.

Team

Welcome, Nima

Welcome to Nima, who has joined the lab.

Talk

Invited Talk

Ján gave an invited lecture at the Workshop on AI for Modeling, Control, and Optimization of Partial Differential Equations during the American Control Conference (ACC) in New Orleans.

Talk

Poster Presentation

Honghui presented the research poster `NOIR: A MINLP Solver using Neural Overparameterization for Integer Representation` at the University of Connecticut - Stamford.

Talk

Invited Talk

Ján was a speaker for the Bose research seminar series (online).

Talk

Workshop Organization

Ján organized a workshop on Physics-Informed Learning for Modeling, Optimization, and Control of Cyber-Physical Systems at the Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet-of-Things (CPS-IoT) Week in France.

Talk

Invited Talk

Ján presented an invited seminar to the Applied Math Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Talk

Invited Talk

Honghui gave an invited talk on `Accelerating Underground Pumped Hydro Energy Storage Scheduling with Decision-Focused Learning` at the INFORMS Optimization Society Conference.

Team

Welcome, Leandro

Welcome to Leandro, who has joined the lab from EPFL.

Team

Welcome, Liang

Welcome to Liang, who has joined the lab.

Team

Welcome, Parv

Welcome to Parv, who has joined the lab.

Team

Welcome, Honghui and Pietro

Welcome to Honghui and Pietro, who have joined the lab.