Associate Professor [cv]
Computer Science and Engineering
University of California, San Diego
Office: CSE 2126
Email: sicung at ucsd dot edu
Research
- I work on practical algorithms for NP-hard search and optimization problems that arise in the decision, control, and design aspects of computational systems.
- I focus on topics that can benefit from the combinatorial perspectives of automated reasoning but are posed in numerical or statistical forms.
- The end goal is to build useful forms of automation and autonomy that are fundamentally reliable yet aggressively optimized.
- Colloquially, I spend much time dealing with the curse of dimensionality and finding needles in haystacks.
Teaching
- UCSD CSE150: Introduction to AI: Search and Reasoning (Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Fall 2020, Spring 2020, Winter 2019, Winter 2018)
- UCSD CSE257: Search and Optimization (Winter 2025, Winter 2024, Winter 2023, Fall 2021, Spring 2021)
- UCSD CSE191: Undergraduate Thesis Research Seminar (Fall 2021)
- UCSD CSE291: Topics in Search and Optimization (Winter 2020, Spring 2019, Fall 2017)
- PhD Students: Ya-Chien Chang, Chiaki Hirayama, Zhizhen Qin, Tao Wang (with Sylvia Herbert), Chenning Yu, Hongzhan Yu, Ruipeng Zhang
- Alumni: Yongsoo Song (Postdoc '18-'19, now Assistant Professor at Seoul National University), Jacek Cyranka (Postdoc '17-'19, now Assistant Professor at University of Warsaw), Armaiti Ardeshiricham (PhD '20, now Researcher at Apple), Nima Roohi (Postdoc '18-'20, now Applied Scientist at Amazon), Yaoguang Zhai (PhD '24, now Applied Scientist at Amazon), Yuda Song (BS '20, now PhD student at CMU), Milan Ganai (BS/MS '24, now PhD student at Stanford), Eric Yu (BS/MS '24, now PhD student at MIT)
- Our work is funded by the following sources: Air Force Young Investigator Award, Amazon Research Award, DARPA Assured Autonomy, Department of Energy, NSF AI Institute, NSF Career Award, NSF DASS, NSF National Robotics Initiative, NSF Cyber-Physical Systems.
- dReal [tool page]: Automated reasoning in nonlinear theories over the reals
- Estimating Control Barriers from Offline Data [arXiv]
Hongzhan Yu, Seth Farrell, Ryo Yoshimitsu, Zhizhen Qin, Henrik Christensen, and Sicun Gao
ICRA (IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation) 2025 - Patching Approximately Safe Value Functions Leveraging Local Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability Analysis [arXiv]
Sander Tonkens, Alex Toofanian, Zhizhen Qin, Sicun Gao, and Sylvia Herbert
CDC (IEEE Conference on Decision and Control) 2024 - SEEV: Synthesis with Efficient Exact Verification for ReLU Neural Barrier Functions
[arXiv]
Hongchao Zhang, Zhizhen Qin, Sicun Gao, and Andrew Clark
NeurIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems) 2024 - Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability in Reinforcement Learning: A Survey [arXiv]
Milan Ganai, Sicun Gao, and Sylvia Herbert
IEEE Open Journal of Control Systems 2024 - Activation-Descent Regularization for Input Optimization of ReLU Networks [arXiv]
Hongzhan Yu and Sicun Gao
ICML (International Conference on Machine Learning) 2024 - Mollification Effects of Policy Gradient Methods [arXiv]
Tao Wang, Sylvia Herbert, and Sicun Gao
ICML (International Conference on Machine Learning) 2024 - Breaking the Barrier: Enhanced Utility and Robustness in Smoothed DRL Agents
Chung-En Sun, Sicun Gao, and Tsui-Wei Weng
ICML (International Conference on Machine Learning) 2024 - Extremum-Seeking Action Selection for Accelerating Policy Optimization [project page]
Ya-Chien Chang and Sicun Gao
ICRA (International Conference on Robotics and Automation) 2024 - Efficient Motion Planning for Manipulators with Barrier-Induced Neural Controller
Mingxin Yu, Chenning Yu, Mohammad Mahdi Naddaf Shargh, Devesh Upadhyay, Sicun Gao, and Chuchu Fan
ICRA (International Conference on Robotics and Automation) 2024 - Sample-and-Bound for Non-Convex Optimization [arXiv]
Yaoguang Zhai, Zhizhen Qin, and Sicun Gao
AAAI (AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence) 2024 - Iterative Reachability Estimation for Safe Reinforcement Learning [project page]
Milan Ganai, Zheng Gong, Chenning Yu, Sylvia Herbert, and Sicun Gao
NeurIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems) 2023 - Fractal Landscapes in Policy Optimization [arXiv]
Tao Wang, Sylvia Herbert, and Sicun Gao
NeurIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems) 2023 - Sequential Neural Barriers for Scalable Dynamic Obstacle Avoidance [project page]
Hongzhan Yu, Chiaki Hirayama, Chenning Yu, Sylvia Herbert, and Sicun Gao
IROS (International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) 2023 [IROS RoboCup Best Paper Award]
- Learning Stabilization Control from Observations by Learning Lyapunov-like Proxy Models [project page]
Milan Ganai, Chiaki Hirayama, Ya-Chien Chang, and Sicun Gao
ICRA (International Conference on Robotics and Automation) 2023 - Accelerating Multi-Agent Planning Using Graph Transformers with Bounded Suboptimality [project page]
Chenning Yu, Qingbiao Li, Sicun Gao, and Amanda Prorok
ICRA (International Conference on Robotics and Automation) 2023 - Everyone's Preference Changes Differently: A Weighted Multi-Interest Model For Retrieval
Hui Shi, Yupeng Gu, Yitong Zhou, Bo Zhao, Sicun Gao, and Jishen Zhao
ICML (International Conference on Machine Learning) 2023 - Safe Control with Learned Certificates: A Survey of Neural Lyapunov, Barrier, and Contraction Methods [arXiv]
Charles Dawson, Sicun Gao, and Chuchu Fan
IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO) 2023 - Monte Carlo Tree Descent for Black-Box Optimization [arXiv]
Yaoguang Zhai and Sicun Gao
NeurIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems) 2022 - Learning-based Motion Planning in Dynamic Environments Using GNNs and Temporal Encoding [arXiv]
Ruipeng Zhang, Chenning Yu, Jingkai Chen, Chuchu Fan, and Sicun Gao
NeurIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems) 2022 - Policy Optimization with Advantage Regularization for Long-Term Fairness in Decision Systems [arXiv]
Eric Yang Yu, Zhizhen Qin, Min Kyung Lee, and Sicun Gao
NeurIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems) 2022 - Learning Control Admissibility Models with Graph Neural Networks for Multi-Agent Navigation [project page]
Chenning Yu, Hongzhan Yu, and Sicun Gao
CoRL (Conference on Robot Learning) 2022 - Quantifying Safety of Learning-based Self-Driving Control Using Almost-Barrier Functions
[arXiv]
Zhizhen Qin, Tsui-Wei Weng, and Sicun Gao
IROS (International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems) 2022 - Learning Bounded Context-Free Grammar via LSTM and Transformers: Differences and Explanations [arXiv]
Hui Shi, Sicun Gao, Yuandong Tian, Xinyun Chen, and Jishen Zhao
AAAI (AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence) 2022 - Reducing Collision Checking for Sampling-Based Motion Planning Using Graph Neural Networks [project page]
Chenning Yu and Sicun Gao
NeurIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems) 2021 - A Neural Lyapunov Approach to Transient Stability Assessment of Power Electronics-interfaced Networked Microgrids [pdf]
Tong Huang, Sicun Gao, and Le Xie
IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid 2021 [IEEE Power & Enery Society Technical Committee Prize Paper Award] - Safe Nonlinear Control Using Robust Neural Lyapunov-Barrier Functions [arXiv]
Charles Dawson, Zengyi Qin, Sicun Gao, and Chuchu Fan
CoRL (Conference on Robot Learning) 2021 - Stabilizing Neural Control Using Self-Learned Almost Lyapunov Critics [project page]
Ya-Chien Chang and Sicun Gao
ICRA (International Conference on Robotics and Automation) 2021 - Provably Efficient Model-based Policy Adaptation [project page]
Yuda Song, Aditi Mavalankar, Wen Sun, and Sicun Gao
ICML (International Conference on Machine Learning) 2020 - Active Learning of Many-body Configuration Space: Application to the Cs+-water MB-nrg Potential Energy [chemArxiv]
Yaoguang Zhai, Alessandro Caruso, Sicun Gao, and Francesco Paesani
JCP (Journal of Chemical Physics) 2020 - Neural Lyapunov Control [project page]
Ya-Chien Chang, Nima Roohi, and Sicun Gao
NeurIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems) 2019 - VeriSketch: Synthesizing Secure Hardware Designs with Timing-Sensitive Information Flow Properties [pdf]
Armaiti Ardeshiricham, Yoshiki Takashima, Sicun Gao, and Ryan Kastner
CCS (ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security) 2019 - Numerically-Robust Inductive Proof Rules for Continuous Dynamical Systems [pdf]
Sicun Gao, James Kapinski, Jyotirmoy Deshmukh, Nima Roohi, Armando Solar-Lezama, Nikos Arechiga, and Soonho Kong
CAV (International Conference on Computer Aided Verification) 2019 - Inverse Abstraction of Neural Networks Using Symbolic Interpolation [pdf]
Sumanth Dathathri, Sicun Gao, and Richard M. Murray
AAAI (AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence) 2019 - Tight Continuous-Time Reachtubes for Lagrangian Reachability [pdf]
Jacek Cyranka, Md. Ariful Islam, Scott Smolka, Sicun Gao, and Radu Grosu
CDC (IEEE Conference on Decision and Control) 2018 - Delta-Decision Procedures for Exists-Forall Problems over the Reals [pdf]
Soonho Kong, Armando Solar-Lezama, and Sicun Gao
CAV (International Conference on Computer Aided Verification) 2018 - LEMAX: Learning-based Energy Consumption Minimization in Approximate Computing with Quality Guarantee
Vahideh Akhlaghi, Sicun Gao, and Rajesh Gupta
DAC (Design Automation Conference) 2018 - Modular SMT-Based Analysis of Nonlinear Hybrid Systems [pdf]
Kyungmin Bae and Sicun Gao
FMCAD (Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design) 2017 - Learning-Based Abstractions for Nonlinear Constraint Solving [pdf]
Sumanth Dathathri, Nikos Arechiga, Sicun Gao, and Richard M. Murray
IJCAI (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence) 2017 - Interpolants in Nonlinear Theories over the Reals [pdf]
Sicun Gao and Damien Zufferey
TACAS (International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems) 2016 - APEX: A Tool for Autonomous Vehicle Plan Verification and Execution [pdf]
Matthew O'Kelly, Houssam Abbas, Sicun Gao, Shin'ichi Shiraishi, Shinpei Kato, and Rahul Mangharam
SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) World Congress and Exhibition 2016
- SMT-Based Analysis of Virtually Synchronous Distributed Hybrid Systems [pdf]
Kyungmin Bae, Peter Olveczky, Soonho Kong, and Sicun Gao
HSCC (ACM International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control) 2016 - Automated Vulnerability Analysis of AC State Estimation under Constrained False Data Injection in Electric Power Systems [pdf]
Sicun Gao, Le Xie, Armando Solar-Lezama, Dimitrios Serpanos, and Howard Shrobe
CDC (IEEE Conference on Decision and Control) 2015 - dReach: Delta-Reachability Analysis for Hybrid Systems [pdf]
Soonho Kong, Sicun Gao, Wei Chen, and Edmund Clarke
TACAS (International Conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems) 2015 - SMT-Based Nonlinear PDDL+ Planning [pdf]
Daniel Bryce, Sicun Gao, David Musliner, and Robert P. Goldman
AAAI (AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence) 2015 - Towards Personalized Prostate Cancer Therapy Using Delta-Reachability Analysis [pdf]
Bing Liu, Soonho Kong, Sicun Gao, Paolo Zuliani, and Edmund Clarke
HSCC (ACM International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control) 2015 -
Parameter Synthesis for Cardiac Cell Hybrid Models Using Delta-Decisions [arXiv]
Bing Liu, Soonho Kong, Sicun Gao, Paolo Zuliani, and Edmund Clarke
CMSB (Computational Methods in Systems Biology) 2014 - Proof Generation from Delta-Decisions [arXiv]
Sicun Gao, Soonho Kong, and Edmund Clarke
SYNASC (International Conference on Symbolic and Numerical Algorithms for Scientific Computing) 2014 - Satisfiability Modulo ODEs [pdf]
Sicun Gao, Soonho Kong, and Edmund Clarke
FMCAD (Formal Methods in Computer-Aided Design) 2013 - Floating-point Bugs in the Embedded GNU C Library [pdf]
Soonho Kong, Sicun Gao, and Edmund Clarke
CMU SCS Technical Report CMU-CS-13-130 2013 - dReal: An SMT Solver for Nonlinear Theories of Reals [pdf] [tool]
Sicun Gao, Soonho Kong, and Edmund Clarke
CADE (International Conference on Automated Deduction) 2013 - Computable Analysis, Hybrid Automata, and Decision Procedures: A New Framework for the Formal Verification of Cyber-Physical Systems [extended abstract]
PhD Thesis in Logic, Carnegie Mellon University 2012
Committee: Edmund Clarke (co-chair), Jeremy Avigad (co-chair), Lenore Blum, Randy Bryant, and Jeannette Wing
- Delta-Complete Decision Procedures for Satisfiability over the
Reals [pdf]
Sicun Gao, Jeremy Avigad, and Edmund Clarke
IJCAR (International Joint Conference on Automated Reasoning) 2012 - Delta-Decidability over the Reals [arXiv]
Sicun Gao, Jeremy Avigad, and Edmund Clarke
LICS (Logic in Computer Science) 2012 - Quantifier Elimination over Finite Fields with Groebner Bases [arXiv]
Sicun Gao, Andre Platzer, and Edmund Clarke
CAI (International Conference on Algebraic Informatics) 2011 - Integrating ICP and LRA Solvers for Deciding Nonlinear Real Arithmetic [pdf]
Sicun Gao, Malay Ganai, Franjo Ivancic, Aarti Gupta, Sriram Sankaranarayanan, and Edmund Clarke
FMCAD (Formal Methods in Computer Aided Design) 2010 - A Non-Prenex DPLL-Based QBF Solver with Game-State Learning [pdf]
William Klieber, Samir Sapra, Sicun Gao, and Edmund Clarke
SAT (Theory and Applications of Satisfiability Testing) 2010 - Counting Zeros over Finite Fields with Groebner Bases [pdf]
MS Thesis in Logic, Carnegie Mellon University 2009
The infinite we shall do right away. The finite may take a little longer. -- Stanislaw Ulam