Jay H. Lee's Talk

Start
Nov 10, 2021 - 13:30
End
Nov 10, 2021 - 14:30
Venue
Online Webinar
Event Type
Speaker
Professor of Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Director of Aramco-KAIST CO2 Management Center Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Daejeon, Korea
Title
Reinforcement Learning for Control and Beyond

Abstract:
Since Alan Turing’s remarkable foresight of creating a machine that simulates the “adult brain” starting from the “child mind” through a computer algorithm that educates through rewards and punishments, reinforcement learning (RL) has been at the forefront of many academic fields including psychology, computer science, and control.  With recent advancement of deep learning and GPU-computing as well as well-publicized success stories like the Alpha-Go, it is enjoying a renaissance of popularity and offers opportunities for applications with commercial impacts.  RL and control originated from the different fields but they both address the same basic problem of making sequential decisions in an uncertain, dynamic environment to maximize/minimize a long-term objective function.  In this presentations, similarities and differences between reinforcement learning and optimal control will be brought to attention and some ideas will be shared on how they can be brought to complement and support each other in solving complex industrial decision problems.  Some exemplary applications expected to benefit significantly from the use of RL concepts and methods will be presented, including batch process control, energy planning, and materials design.

Bio:
Jay H. Lee obtained his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1986, and his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Engineering from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, in 1991.  From 1991 to 1998, he was with the Department of Chemical Engineering at Auburn University, AL, as an Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor.  From 1998-2000, he was with School of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University, West Lafayette, and then with the School of Chemical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta from 2000-2010. Since 2010, he is with the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), where he was the department head from