DEEPSE Forum Seminars | Formal Methods for AI-enabled Cyber-Physical Systems

Mercoledì 4 febbraio 2026 | 9:30 - 11:00
Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria - Politecnico di Milano
Aula BIO1 (Edificio 20)

Speaker: Prof. Ezio Bartocci (TU Wien)

Contatti: Bruno Guindani | bruno.guindani@polimi.it

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a core component of cyber-physical systems, enabling autonomy and adaptability in domains such as robotics, autonomous driving, and intelligent edge platforms. However, the use of machine learning and reinforcement learning in safety-critical settings raises fundamental challenges related to reliability, robustness, and uncertainty.

In this seminar, Prof. Ezio Bartocci will present his recent research in formal methods for AI-enabled cyber-physical systems, focusing on the verification, monitoring, and testing of learning-based components. The talk will cover formal reasoning about neural networks under uncertainty, quantitative evaluation of learning-enabled behaviors against temporal specifications, and runtime monitoring and assurance mechanisms for AI-driven systems.

He will further discuss how formal constraints and rules can be integrated into reinforcement learning, enabling safer and more interpretable policy evaluation and improvement. Complementing these approaches, he will present automated techniques for probabilistic program analysis that provide exact or bounded guarantees on distributions and moments without relying on sampling. The seminar concludes by highlighting how these methods support the deployment of robust, trustworthy, and resource-aware AI in real-world cyber-physical systems, and by outlining open research challenges at the intersection of machine learning, control, and formal verification.

Ezio Bartocci is a Full Professor at TU Wien, where he leads the Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Systems (TrustCPS) Research Group within the Cyber-Physical Systems Research Unit. His research focuses on formal methods and computational tools for ensuring the safety, security, energy efficiency, and correctness of AI-based cyber-physical systems, with a strong emphasis on sustainability. He currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND doctoral programme LogiCS@TUWien, Chair of the Doctoral College on Trustworthy Autonomous Cyber-Physical Systems, and Research Focus Coordinator for Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien. His work has received multiple Best Paper Awards (EMSOFT 2025, QEST 2022, RV 2011), the Radhia Cousot Young Researcher Award (SAS 2022), and the EASST Best Software Science Award (ETAPS 2022).