Fwd: RI Ph.D. Thesis Proposal: Viraj Mehta today at 2pm

[Jeff Schneider]

Reminder: Come out and hear Viraj's thesis proposal this afternoon on 
Fusion and RL!

Jeff.



-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	RI Ph.D. Thesis Proposal: Viraj Mehta
Date: 	Wed, 11 May 2022 17:46:04 +0000
From: 	Suzanne Lyons Muth <lyonsmuth at cmu.edu>
To: 	ri-people at lists.andrew.cmu.edu <ri-people at lists.andrew.cmu.edu>



Date: 24 May 2022
Time: 2:00 p.m. (ET)
Location: NSH 4305
Zoom Link: 
https://cmu.zoom.us/j/97423016814?pwd=R2JMRWRhR0w1SUR6S2taQTJQVFhvdz09 
<https://cmu.zoom.us/j/97423016814?pwd=R2JMRWRhR0w1SUR6S2taQTJQVFhvdz09>
Type: Ph.D. Thesis Proposal
Who: Viraj Mehta
Title: On Sample-Efficient Reinforcement Learning for Nuclear Fusion

Abstract:

In many practical applications of reinforcement learning (RL), it is 
expensive to observe state transitions from the environment. For 
example, in the problem of plasma control for nuclear fusion, 
determining the next state for a given state-action pair requires 
querying an expensive transition function which can lead to many hours 
of computer simulation or dollars of scientific research. Such expensive 
data collection prohibits application of standard RL algorithms which 
usually require a large number of observations to learn. In this 
proposal, I address the problem of efficiently learning a policy from a 
relatively modest number of observations. The first section leverages 
ideas from Bayesian optimal experimental design to guide the selection 
of state-action queries for efficient learning. The second presents work 
which uses physical prior knowledge about the dynamics to more quickly 
learn an accurate model. Then, I give a brief overview of plasma control 
for nuclear fusion and comment on where I see opportunities for machine 
learning to improve the state of the art for physicists and engineers. I 
present initial work in this direction and give a plan for further 
experiments controlling the rampdown and flattop phases of a plasma shot 
both in simulation and on the DIII-D tokamak. Finally, I discuss my 
timeline for a thesis defense and the projects I would like to 
accomplish along the way.


Thesis Committee Members:
Jeff Schneider, Chair
Deepak Pathak
David Held
Stefano Ermon, Stanford University
Mark D. Boyer, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

A copy of the thesis proposal document is available at:
virajm.com/thesis_proposal.pdf <http://virajm.com/thesis_proposal.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
ri-people mailing list
ri-people at lists.andrew.cmu.edu
https://lists.andrew.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/ri-people