About

In my primary capacity as the leader of the $30M+ Machine Intelligence sub-portfolio of investments for the Information Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL/RI), I provide technical oversight and guidance to existing programs in the area of Artificial Intelligence and, in particular, Machine Learning. I also propose new directions of research and programmatic investments for the lab to undertake as part of the yearly investment strategy. In my secondary capacity as a researcher, I investigate novel solutions in the areas of assured and efficient autonomous systems. This collaborative effort includes the mentoring and funding of students and faculty.

Professional Appointments

  • Senior Research Scientist, Air Force Research Laboratory, June/2018 - Present
  • Visiting Scientist, University of Colorado: Boulder, October/2021 - December/2021
  • Visiting Scientist, University of Central Florida, December/2020 - March/2021
  • Graduate Research Fellow, National Science Foundation, May/2015 - May/2018
  • Computer Science Doctoral Student, University of Central Florida, August/2015 - May/2018
  • Research Contractor, Air Force Research Laboratory, Summers of 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
  • Research Consultant, Griffiss Institute, September/2014 - December/2014
  • Graduate Research Assistant, University of Central Florida, August/2014 - May/2015

Publications

Publications are presented in reverse chronological order.

  1. Verifiable Planning in Expected Reward Multichain MDPs
    George Atia, Andre Beckus, Ismail Alkhouri, and Alvaro Velasquez
    The Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR)
  2. Shaping Noise for Robust Attributions in Neural Stochastic Differential Equations
    Sumit K. Jha, Rickard Ewetz, Alvaro Velasquez, Arvind Ramanathan, Susmit Jha
    The 36th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2022)
  3. Controller Synthesis for Omega-Regular Specifications with Steady-State Constraints
    Alvaro Velasquez, Ismail Alkhouri, Andre Beckus, George Atia, and Ashutosh Trivedi
    The 21st International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2022)
  4. Translating Omega-Regular Specifications to Average Objectives for Model-Free Reinforcement Learning
    Milad Kazemi, Mateo Perez, Fabio Somenzi, Sadegh Soudjani, Ashutosh Trivedi and Alvaro Velasquez
    The 21st International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2022)
  5. On the Approximability of Path and Cycle Problems in Arc-Dependent Networks
    Piotr Wojciechowski, K. Subramani, Alvaro Velasquez, Matthew Williamson
    The 8th Annual International Conference on Algorithms and Discrete Applied Mathematics (CALDAM 2022)
  6. Dynamic Automaton-Guided Reward Shaping for Monte-Carlo Tree Search
    Alvaro Velasquez, Brett Bissey, Lior Barak, Ismail Alkhouri, Andre Beckus, and George Atia
    The 35th AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021)
  7. Automated Synthesis of Quantum Circuits using Symbolic Abstractions and Decision Procedures
    Alvaro Velasquez, Sumit K. Jha, Rickard Ewetz, and Susmit Jha
    The IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2021)
  8. On Smoother Attributions using Neural Stochastic Differential Equations
    Sumit K. Jha, Rickard Ewetz, Alvaro Velasquez, and Susmit Jha
    The 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2021)
  9. Consensus-Based Value Iteration for Multiagent Cooperative Control
    Jing Wang, Elias Wilson, and Alvaro Velasquez
    The 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC 2021)
  10. Mitigating the Class Overlap Problem in Discriminative Localization: COVID-19 and Pneumonia Case Study
    Edward Verenich, M. G. S. Murshed, Nazar Khan, Alvaro Velasquez, and Faraz Hussain
    Book chapter in: Sayed-Mouchaweh M. (eds) Explainable AI Within the Digital Transformation and Cyber Physical Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76409-8_7
  11. Adversarial Perturbation Attacks on Nested Dichotomies Classification Systems
    Ismail Alkhouri, Alvaro Velasquez, and George Atia
    The 31st IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP 2021)
  12. Algorithmic Analysis of Priority-Based Bin Packing
    Piotr Wojciechowski, K. Subramani, Alvaro Velasquez, and Bugra Caskurlu
    The 7th Annual International Conference on Algorithms and Discrete Applied Mathematics (CALDAM 2021)
  13. On the Copy Complexity of Width-3 Horn Constraint Systems
    K. Subramani, Piotr Wojciechowski, and Alvaro Velasquez
    The 13th International Symposium on Frontiers of Combining Systems (FroCoS 2021)
  14. Unsupervised Learning in a Purely Spintronic Multilayer Perceptron Enabled by Four-Terminal Domain Wall Magnetic Tunnel Junction Neuron
    Naimul Hassan, Wesley H. Brigner, Christopher H. Bennett, Alvaro Velasquez, Xuan Hu, Samuel Liu, Can Cui et al.
    In Spintronics XIV, International Society for Optics and Photonics, 2021
  15. Steady-State Policy Synthesis for Multichain Markov Decision Processes
    George Atia, Andre Beckus, Ismail Alkhouri, and Alvaro Velasquez
    The 29th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2020)
  16. FlexServe: Deployment of PyTorch Models as Flexible REST Endpoints
    Edward Verenich, Alvaro Velasquez, M. G. Sarwar Murshed, and Faraz Hussain
    The USENIX Conference on Operational Machine Learning (OpML 2020)
  17. Verification-Guided Tree Search
    Alvaro Velasquez and Daniel Melcer
    The 19th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2020)
  18. Plasticity-Enhanced Domain-Wall MTJ Neural Networks for Energy-Efficient Online Learning
    Christopher H. Bennett, T. Patrick Xiao, Can Cui, Naimul Hassan, Otitoaleke G. Akinola, Jean Anne C. Incorvia, Alvaro Velasquez, Joseph S. Friedman, and Matthew J. Marinella
    The IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2020)
  19. Steady-state policy synthesis for verifiable control
    Alvaro Velasquez
    The 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2019)
  20. On the Susceptibility of Deep Neural Networks to Natural Perturbations
    Mesut Ozdag, Sunny Raj, Steven L. Fernandes, Alvaro Velasquez, Laura Pullum, Sumit K. Jha
    The AISafety Workshop 2019
  21. Spatially Efficient In-Memory Addition Through Destructive and Non-Destructive Operations
    Alvaro Velasquez and Benjamin Shaia
    The IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2019)
  22. 3D Crosspoint Memory as a Parallel Architecture for Computing Network Reachability
    Alvaro Velasquez and Sumit K. Jha
    The 36th IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD)
  23. Minimization of Testing Costs in Capacity-Constrained Database Migration
    K. Subramani, Bugra Caskurlu, and Alvaro Velasquez
    The 4th International Symposium on Algorithmic Aspects of Cloud Computing (ALGOCLOUD 2018)
  24. Brief Announcement: Parallel Transitive Closure Within 3D Crosspoint Memory
    Alvaro Velasquez and Sumit K. Jha
    The 30th Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA 2018)
  25. Finding Minimum Stopping and Trapping Sets: An Integer Linear Programming Approach
    Alvaro Velasquez, K. Subramani, and Steven L. Drager
    The International Symposium on Combinatorial Optimization (ISCO 2018)
  26. In-memory computing using paths-based logic and heterogeneous components
    Alvaro Velasquez and Sumit K. Jha
    The Design, Automation, and Test in Europe Conference Exhibition (DATE 2018)
  27. Computation of Boolean matrix chain products in 3D ReRAM
    Alvaro Velasquez and Sumit K. Jha
    The IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2017)
  28. The Cardinality-Constrained Paths Problem: Multicast Data Routing in Heterogeneous Communication Networks
    Alvaro Velasquez, Piotr Wojciechowski, K. Subramani, Steven L. Drager and Sumit K. Jha
    The 15th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (NCA 2016)
  29. Parallel boolean matrix multiplication in linear time using rectifying memristors
    Alvaro Velasquez and Sumit K. Jha
    The IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2016)
  30. Flow-based computing on nanoscale crossbars: Design and implementation of full adders
    Zahirudden Alamgir, Karsten Beckmann, Nathaniel C. Cady, Alvaro Velasquez, and Sumit K. Jha
    The IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2016)
  31. Fault-tolerant in-memory crossbar computing using quantified constraint solving
    Alvaro Velasquez and Sumit K. Jha
    The 33rd IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD 2015)
  32. Automated synthesis of crossbars for nanoscale computing using formal methods
    Alvaro Velasquez and Sumit K. Jha
    The IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Nanoscale Architectures (NANOARCH 2015)
  33. Parallel computing using memristive crossbar networks: Nullifying the processor-memory bottleneck
    Alvaro Velasquez and Sumit K. Jha
    The IEEE 9th International Design and Test Symposium (IDT 2014)
  34. Putting humpty-dumpty together: Mining causal mechanistic biochemical models from big data
    Faraz Hussain, Alvaro Velasquez, Emily Sassano and Sumit K. Jha
    The IEEE 4th International Conference on Computational Advances in Bio and Medical Sciences (ICCABS 2014)

Patents

Computation of Boolean Formulas Using Sneak Paths in Crossbar Computing
Sumit K. Jha, Dilia E. Rodriguez, Joseph E. van Nostrand, and Alvaro Velasquez
Patent number: US9319047B2
3D Crossbar Architecture for Fast, Efficient In-Memory Computing of Graph Transitive Closure
Alvaro Velasquez and Sumit K. Jha
Patent pending (Technology #33694), http://technologies.tt.research.ucf.edu/technologies/33694_3d-crossbar-architecture-for-fast-efficient-in-memory-computing-of-graph-transitive-closure
Spintronic Computing Architecture and Method
Friedman, Joseph S., Wesley H. Brigner, Naimul Hassan, Xuan Hu, and Alvaro Velasquez
U.S. Patent Application 17/211,722, filed July 29, 2021

Funding

  • Verifiable Interactive Planning
    Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) BAA Topic: Optimization and Discrete Mathematics
    Principal Investigator: Alvaro Velasquez (FY 2020 – FY 2022)
  • Explainable Autonomy via Learned Automaton Representations
    Air Force Research Laboratory Entrepreneurial Research Funds (ERF)
    Principal Investigator: Alvaro Velasquez (FY 2021)
  • Verifiable Reinforcement Learning with Testing for Assured Autonomy
    AFOSR BAA Topic: Test Science for Test and Evaluation
    Principal Investigator: Alvaro Velasquez (FY 2020)
  • Verifiable Reinforcement Learning for Trustworthy Autonomy
    Air Force Research Laboratory Entrepreneurial Research Funds (ERF)
    Principal Investigator: Alvaro Velasquez (FY 2019)

Service

  • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence, December/2021 – Present
  • Program committee member, AISTATS 2022 conference
  • Panelist, DoD National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate fellowship (NDSEG 2021) evaluation committee
  • Program committee member, AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI 2021)
  • Program committee member, ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference (DAC 2020)
  • Proposal reviewer, Guaranteeing AI Robustness against Deception (GARD) DARPA program
  • Proposal reviewer, Learning with Less Labels (LwLL) DARPA program
  • Proposal reviewer, Testing and Evaluation AFOSR program
  • Evaluation committee member, MIT Lincoln Laboratories autonomous systems line of programs, 2020 and 2021
  • Proposal reviewer, Optimization and Discrete Mathematics AFOSR program
  • Proposal reviewer, Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience AFOSR program
  • Proposal reviewer, Trusted Autonomy and Cyber AFOSR program
  • Committee member, NATO exploratory group IST-ET-112 on “Machine Learning Ecosystem for the Rapid Research, Development, and Deployment of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Capabilities”
  • Program committee member, AFRL Trusted AI challenge series (https://www.innovare.org/events/trusted-ai-challenge-series)
  • Evaluation committee member, National Security Innovation Network (NSIN) Propel Series, a startup accelerator program targeting Department of Defense problems (https://www.nsin.mil/propel/)
  • Program committee member, AFRL Innovare Aspire series (https://www.innovare.org/aspire)
  • Editor of the inaugural Autonomy, Command & Control (AC2) magazine for the Information Directorate of AFRL. Copies available upon request for Department of Defense employees and U.S. DoD contractors only (distribution D)