Abhishek N. Kulkarni
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Ph.D. Candidate,
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Research Interests
I am presently exploring the use of formal methods and automated reasoning to synthesize strategies for autonomous agents capable of deception.
My focus areas are:
Reactive Synthesis
Automated Reasoning
Game and Hypergame Theory
Applications: Cybersecurity, Robot Motion Planning
Please visit my research and publications page for detailed information about my ongoing research.
Bio
I am a fourth-year MS/PhD candidate in Robotics Engineering program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). I earned my B.Tech. degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from Vishwakarma Institute of Technology (VIT), Pune, India in 2016. At VIT, I founded the Cognitive Robotics and Intelligent Systems Lab (CRISTL), which was the first lab on campus to use an integrated cognitive science, machine learning and logic-based AI approach to design intelligent robots. While conducting research and teaching at CRISTL, I was intrigued by the question about How to design an intelligent robot which can reason autonomously and, most importantly, in a provably-correct way? The quest to answer this question brought me to WPI, where under the guidance of Prof. Jie Fu, I am exploring the formal methods approach (a logic-based AI approach) to allow autonomous agents to not only reason in a provably-correct way but also use advanced behaviors like deception to their advantage. At WPI, I am a member of A&S Graduate Student Advisory Council and also represent my department in the Graduate Student Government (GSG).
News
[Oct. 2020] I presented a lightning talk on at Designing Robots that Deceive: A Formal Methods Approach at Arts and Science Week at WPI.
[Oct. 2020] I received Dr. Glenn Yee Graduate Student Tuition Award for Spring 2021.
[Sept. 2020] Our paper titled Decoy Placement Games on Graphs with Temporal Logic Objectives is accepted to GameSec 2020.
[June 2020] A book chapter A Theory of Hypergames on Graphs for Synthesizing Dynamic Cyber Defense with Deception is accepted to be published in the book Game Theory and Machine Learning for Cyber Security.
[June 2020] Our paper titled Deceptive Labeling: Hypergames on Graphs for Stealthy Deception is accepted in L-CSS. Paper is available on IEEEXplore.
[June 2020] I gave a short talk (video, paper) at Foundations of Computer Security (FCS) Workshop at CSF 2020.
[Apr. 2020] The paper Synthesis of Deceptive Strategies in Reachability Games with Action Misperception is accepted at IJCAI 2020.
[Dec. 2019] I presented my paper Opportunistic Synthesis in Reactive Games under Information Asymmetry at CDC 2019.
[Dec. 2019] I successfully completed my PhD qualifying exam. I am a PhD Candidate! Qualifier Presentation.
[May 2018] I presented my paper A Compositional Approach to Reactive Games under Temporal Logic Specifications at ACC 2018.