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Because failures in distribution systems caused by extreme weather events directly result in consumers' outages, this paper proposes a state-based decision-making model with the objective of mitigating loss of load to improve the…

In this paper, we formulate the adaptive learning problem---the problem of how to find an individualized learning plan (called policy) that chooses the most appropriate learning materials based on learner's latent traits---faced in adaptive…

Markov decision processes (MDPs) are a well studied framework for solving sequential decision making problems under uncertainty. Exact methods for solving MDPs based on dynamic programming such as policy iteration and value iteration are…

We consider the problem of solving robust Markov decision process (MDP), which involves a set of discounted, finite state, finite action space MDPs with uncertain transition kernels. The goal of planning is to find a robust policy that…

We study infinite-horizon robust Markov decision processes (MDPs) on continuous state spaces with structured rectangular ambiguity set. The proposed ambiguity set falls within the convex hull of unknown generating kernels. We utilize the…

In this review/tutorial article, we present recent progress on optimal control of partially observed Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs). We first present regularity and continuity conditions for POMDPs and their belief-MDP reductions, where…

Approximate dynamic programming is a popular method for solving large Markov decision processes. This paper describes a new class of approximate dynamic programming (ADP) methods- distributionally robust ADP-that address the curse of…

This paper discusses the functional stability of closed-loop Markov Chains under optimal policies resulting from a discounted optimality criterion, forming Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). We investigate the stability of MDPs in the sense…

In this paper, we develop a rigorous optimal control-theoretic approach to Transformer training that respects key structural constraints such as (i) realized-input-independence during execution, (ii) the ensemble control nature of the…

We consider controller synthesis for stochastic and partially unknown environments in which safety is essential. Specifically, we abstract the problem as a Markov decision process in which the expected performance is measured using a cost…

We present a non-asymptotic convergence analysis of $Q$-learning and actor-critic algorithms for robust average-reward Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) under contamination, total-variation (TV) distance, and Wasserstein uncertainty sets. A…

We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with unknown disturbance distribution and address this problem using the robust Markov decision process (RMDP) approach. We construct the empirical distribution of the unknown disturbance…

We consider two core algorithmic problems for probabilistic verification: the maximal end-component decomposition and the almost-sure reachability set computation for Markov decision processes (MDPs). For MDPs with treewidth $k$, we present…

Decision-making under distribution shift is a central challenge in reinforcement learning (RL), where training and deployment environments differ. We study this problem through the lens of robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs), which…

Reinforcement learning with function approximation has recently achieved tremendous results in applications with large state spaces. This empirical success has motivated a growing body of theoretical work proposing necessary and sufficient…

We study model-based reinforcement learning (RL) for episodic Markov decision processes (MDP) whose transition probability is parametrized by an unknown transition core with features of state and action. Despite much recent progress in…

Quantum error correction (QEC) is indispensable for realizing fault-tolerant quantum computation, yet its effectiveness hinges critically on the classical decoding algorithm that interprets noisy syndrome measurements. Among all possible…

This paper studies the computation of robust deterministic policies for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) in the Lightning Does Not Strike Twice (LDST) model of Mannor, Mebel and Xu (ICML '12). In this model, designed to provide robustness…

General purpose intelligent learning agents cycle through (complex,non-MDP) sequences of observations, actions, and rewards. On the other hand, reinforcement learning is well-developed for small finite state Markov Decision Processes…

We consider episodic reinforcement learning in reward-mixing Markov decision processes (RMMDPs): at the beginning of every episode nature randomly picks a latent reward model among $M$ candidates and an agent interacts with the MDP…