# Thesis Ideas 2025-07-30

Following our group meeting from Monday, July 28th, Dan
suggested I write down 6 ideas, and from them we shall
figure out a possible topic idea that I can really start
working on.

I used ChatGPT to do some of the heavy lifting based on the
papers I've been reading, and leveraged the 'deep research'
feature. Here are some of my favorite ideas, broken down
into goals, outcomes, impact, and related papers.

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## **Integrating Shielding into Nuclear Power Control** 

### Goal:

The goal of this research is to develop machine learning
control algorithms for nuclear power applications with
strict safety guarantees.

### Outcomes:

If this research is successful, I will have accomplished the
following:

1. Develop controller shielding methods for nuclear power
   contexts

2. Provide concrete safety guarantees for autonomous control
   of a nuclear asset.

3. ??? <!TODO!>

### Impact: 

Machine learning based systems have been shown to be more
efficient than typical PID based controllers, and are able
to learn more complex objective functions than a typical
controller can. The problem with these controllers though is
that they are often unexplainable. This is not acceptable
for high assurance applications, where slight perturbations
on inputs can yield wildly different outputs. Shielding can
solve this problem, helping ensure safety of ML based
controllers while not limiting their development or
construction. 

### Relevant Papers

[[safe-reinforcement-learning-via-shielding]]
[[evaluating-robustness-of-neural-networks-with-mixed-integer-programming]]

___________________________________________________________

## **Formally Verified Control of Reactor Systems** 

### Goals:
The goal of this research is to use formal methods to ensure
that a neural network based control rod controller will never violate
safety guarantees of a reactor trip system.

### Outcomes:
If this research is successful, I will accomplish the
following.

### Impact:

### Related Papers:


___________________________________________________________

## **Temporal Logic Specifications for Autonomous Controller Synthesis**
(3)

### Goals:

### Outcomes:

### Impact:

### Related Papers:
___________________________________________________________

## **Formally Verified Runtime Monitoring and Fallback**
(4)

### Goals:

### Outcomes:

### Impact:

### Related Papers:

___________________________________________________________

## **Data-Driven Model Verification for High-Assurance Digital Twins** 
(8)

### Goals:

### Outcomes:

### Impact:

### Related Papers:

___________________________________________________________

## **Verified Adaptive Control** 
(10)

### Goals:

### Outcomes:

### Impact:

### Related Papers: