Deep Thinking
Human-inspired thinking systems can solve complex logical reasoning problems.
Biography
My research lies at the intersection of machine learning and optimization, and targets applications in computer vision and signal processing. I work at the boundary between theory and practice, leveraging mathematical foundations, complex models, and efficient hardware to build practical, high-performance systems. I design optimization methods for a wide range of platforms ranging from powerful cluster/cloud computing environments to resource limited integrated circuits and FPGAs. Before joining the faculty at Maryland, I completed my PhD in Mathematics at UCLA, and was a research scientist at Rice University and Stanford University. I have been the recipient of several awards, including SIAM’s DiPrima Prize, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, and a Sloan Fellowship.
Research
Here are some of my most recent projects. I believe in reproducible research, and I try to develop open-source tools to accompany my research when possible. For a full list of software and projects, see my complete research page.
Sonifying speech nets
We sonify (rather than visualize) what neurons respond to in a speech recognition model.
Making an invisibility cloak
We construct clothing that makes the wearer invisible to common object detectors.
Understanding generalization
The origins of generalization in neural nets are mysterious and have eluded understanding. We gain an intuitive grasp on generalization through carefully crafted experiments.
Attacks on copyright systems
We show that content control systems are vulnerable to adversarial attacks. Using small perturbations, we can fool important industrial systems like YouTube’s Content ID.
Adversarial training for FREE!
Adversarial training hardens neural nets against attacks, but it costs 10-100X more than regular training. We show how to do adversarial training with no added cost, and train a robust ImageNet model on a desktop computer in just a day.
Are adversarial examples inevitable?
A pattern has emerged in which the majority of adversarial defenses are quickly broken by new attacks. Given the lack of success at generating robust defenses, we are led to ask a fundamental question: Are adversarial attacks inevitable?
Stacked U-Nets: A simple network for image processing
Stacked U-Nets are simple, easy-to-train neural architecture for image segmentation and other image-to-image regression tasks. SUNets attain state of the art performance and fast inference with very few parameters.
Sponsors
My research is made possible by the generous support of the following organizations.
