Optimization
Efficient solutions to large-scale problems.
Much of MERL's research activity involves formulating scientific and engineering problems as optimizations, which can be solved in an efficient way. We have developed fundamental algorithms to better solve classic problems, such as quadratic programs and minimum-cost paths. Our work also involves developing theoretical bounds to understand performance limits.
Quick Links
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Researchers
Stefano
Di Cairano
Arvind
Raghunathan
Toshiaki
Koike-Akino
Daniel N.
Nikovski
Christopher R.
Laughman
Yebin
Wang
Philip V.
Orlik
Abraham P.
Vinod
Ye
Wang
Kieran
Parsons
Scott A.
Bortoff
Avishai
Weiss
Petros T.
Boufounos
Matthew
Brand
Hassan
Mansour
Jianlin
Guo
Pu
(Perry)
Wang
Vedang M.
Deshpande
Hongbo
Sun
Dehong
Liu
Hongtao
Qiao
Purnanand
Elango
Bingnan
Wang
Yanting
Ma
Gordon
Wichern
Chungwei
Lin
Saviz
Mowlavi
William S.
Yerazunis
Nobuyuki
Yoshikawa
Jinyun
Zhang
Abraham
Goldsmith
Shingo
Kobori
Jordan
Leung
Pedro
Miraldo
Joshua
Rapp
Alexander
Schperberg
Anoop
Cherian
Radu
Corcodel
Anna
Deza
Kenji
Inomata
Jing
Liu
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Awards
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AWARD Mitsubishi Electric and MERL work recognized with IEEJ Distinguished Paper Award Date: June 1, 2025
Awarded to: Arvind Raghunathan, Daniel Nikovski
MERL Contacts: Daniel N. Nikovski; Arvind Raghunathan
Research Areas: Electric Systems, OptimizationBrief- A publication jointly authored by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation's Advanced Technology Center (ATC) and MERL researchers has been recognized with the 2025 IEEJ Distinguished Paper Award by the Institute of Electrical Engineers Japan. The paper titled "Power Band Model Based on Flow Network and Weekly Unit Commitment Problem Considering Reserve Market" published in the IEEJ Transactions on Power and Energy presents a novel Unit Commitment formulation for scheduling the generator operations. Arvind Raghunathan and Daniel Nikovksi were co-authors on this publication.
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AWARD Mitsubishi Electric Team Wins Awards at GalFer Contest Date: June 23, 2025
Awarded to: Bingnan Wang, Tatsuya Yamamoto, Yusuke Sakamoto, Siyuan Sun, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, and Ye Wang
MERL Contacts: Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Bingnan Wang; Ye Wang
Research Areas: Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, OptimizationBrief- The MELSUR (Mitsubishi Electric SURrogate) team, consisting of a group of MERL and Mitsubishi Electric researchers, ranked first in two out of three categories in the GalFer Contest.
The GalFer (Galileo Ferraris) contest aims to compare the accuracy and efficiency of data-driven methodologies for the multi-physics simulation of traction electric machines. A total of 26 teams worldwide participated in the contest, which consists of three categories. The MELSUR team, including MERL staff Bingnan Wang, Toshiaki Koike-Akino, Ye Wang, MERL intern Siyuan Sun, Mitsubishi Electric researchers Tatsuya Yamamoto and Yusuke Sakamoto, ranked first for the category of "Novelty" and "Interpolation". The results were announced during an award ceremony at the COMPUMAG 2025 conference in Naples, Italy.
- The MELSUR (Mitsubishi Electric SURrogate) team, consisting of a group of MERL and Mitsubishi Electric researchers, ranked first in two out of three categories in the GalFer Contest.
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AWARD MERL Researchers Win Best Workshop Poster Award at the 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) Date: June 2, 2023
Awarded to: Yuki Shirai, Devesh Jha, Arvind Raghunathan and Dennis Hong
MERL Contact: Arvind Raghunathan
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Optimization, RoboticsBrief- MERL's paper titled: "Closed-Loop Tactile Controller for Tool Manipulation" Won the Best Poster Award in the workshop on "Embracing contacts : Making robots physically interact with our world". First author and MERL intern, Yuki Shirai, was presented with the award at a ceremony held at ICRA in London. MERL researchers Devesh Jha, Principal Research Scientist, and Arvind Raghunathan, Senior Principal Research Scientist and Senior Team Leader as well as Prof. Dennis Hong of University of California, Los Angeles are also coauthors.
The paper presents a technique to manipulate an object using a tool in a closed-loop fashion using vision-based tactile sensors. More information about the workshop and the various speakers can be found here https://sites.google.com/view/icra2023embracingcontacts/home.
- MERL's paper titled: "Closed-Loop Tactile Controller for Tool Manipulation" Won the Best Poster Award in the workshop on "Embracing contacts : Making robots physically interact with our world". First author and MERL intern, Yuki Shirai, was presented with the award at a ceremony held at ICRA in London. MERL researchers Devesh Jha, Principal Research Scientist, and Arvind Raghunathan, Senior Principal Research Scientist and Senior Team Leader as well as Prof. Dennis Hong of University of California, Los Angeles are also coauthors.
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News & Events
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NEWS MERL Presents Set-Based Reachability Research for Spacecraft Guidance at NASA Johnson Space Center Date: April 15, 2026 - April 16, 2026
Where: NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston
MERL Contacts: Abraham P. Vinod; Avishai Weiss
Research Areas: Control, Dynamical Systems, Optimization, RoboticsBrief- MERL researchers Avishai Weiss and Abraham Vinod visited NASA Johnson Space Center to present recent advances in set-based reachability analysis for spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control, with an emphasis on powered descent guidance for lunar landing. They delivered an invited talk titled “Safe and Optimal Control for Spacecraft GN&C using Set-Based Reachability Analysis.”
The presentation introduced MERL’s recently developed set-based computational techniques for safe, optimal, and robust spacecraft control, including methods that specialize the approach for computing maximum divert envelopes and enabling real-time landing footprint prediction for landers. The talk was attended by researchers from NASA and the University of Washington, and generated extensive technical discussion.
- MERL researchers Avishai Weiss and Abraham Vinod visited NASA Johnson Space Center to present recent advances in set-based reachability analysis for spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control, with an emphasis on powered descent guidance for lunar landing. They delivered an invited talk titled “Safe and Optimal Control for Spacecraft GN&C using Set-Based Reachability Analysis.”
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EVENT MERL Contributes to ICASSP 2026 Date: Monday, May 4, 2026 - , May 8, 2026
Location: Barcelona, Spain
MERL Contacts: Wael H. Ali; Petros T. Boufounos; Chiori Hori; Jonathan Le Roux; Yanting Ma; Hassan Mansour; Yoshiki Masuyama; Joshua Rapp; Anthony Vetro; Pu (Perry) Wang; Gordon Wichern
Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Optimization, Signal Processing, Speech & AudioBrief- MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2026, which is being held in Barcelona, Spain from May 4-8, 2026.
Sponsorship
MERL is proud to be a Silver Patron of the conference and will participate in the student job fair on Thursday, May 7. Please join this session to learn more about employment opportunities at MERL, including openings for research scientists, post-docs, and interns. MERL Distinguished Research Scientists Petros T. Boufounos and Jonathan Le Roux will also present a spotlight session on MERL’s research in signal processing on Tuesday, May 5 at 13:05. Finally, MERL will sponsor a photo booth on Thursday, May 7 and Friday, May 8, where ICASSP participants can take professional photos with friends and colleagues, which will be emailed to them.
MERL is also pleased to be the sponsor of two IEEE Awards that will be presented at the conference. We congratulate Prof. Nasir Ahmed, the recipient of the 2026 IEEE Fourier Award for Signal Processing, and Dr. Alex Acero, the recipient of the 2026 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award.
Technical Program
MERL is presenting 8 papers in the main conference on a wide range of topics including source separation, spatial audio, neural audio codecs, radar-based pose estimation, camera-based airflow sensing, radar array processing, and optimization. Another paper on neural speech codecs will be presented at the Low-Resource Audio Codec (LRAC) Satellite Workshop. MERL researchers will also present two articles published in IEEE Open Journal of Signal Processing (OJSP) on music source separation and head-related transfer function (HRTF) modeling. Finally, Speech and Audio Team members Yoshiki Masuyama and Jonathan Le Roux co-organized a Special Session on Neural Spatial Audio Processing, which will feature six oral presentations.
About ICASSP
ICASSP is the flagship conference of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and the world's largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on the research advances and latest technological development in signal and information processing. The event attracts more than 4000 participants each year.
- MERL has made numerous contributions to both the organization and technical program of ICASSP 2026, which is being held in Barcelona, Spain from May 4-8, 2026.
See All News & Events for Optimization -
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Research Highlights
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Internships
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MS0254: Internship - Decentralized Data Assimilation for Large Scale Systems
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EA0235: Internship - Planning and Control of Mobile Manipulators
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MS0098: Internship - Control and Estimation for Large-Scale Thermofluid Systems
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Openings
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SA0297: Postdoctoral Research Fellow - AI for Science
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MS0268: Research Scientist - Multiphysical Systems
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CI0177: Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Agentic AI
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Recent Publications
- , "GPU-Accelerated Continuous-Time Successive Convexification for Contact-Implicit Legged Locomotion", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), June 2026.BibTeX TR2026-068 PDF
- @inproceedings{Buckner2026jun,
- author = {Buckner, Samuel and Elango, Purnanand},
- title = {{GPU-Accelerated Continuous-Time Successive Convexification for Contact-Implicit Legged Locomotion}},
- booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)},
- year = 2026,
- month = jun,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-068}
- }
- , "A Comparison of MPC Architectures for a Heat Pump", American Control Conference (ACC), May 2026.BibTeX TR2026-060 PDF
- @inproceedings{Bortoff2026may,
- author = {Bortoff, Scott A. and Quah, Titus and Rawlings, James B.},
- title = {{A Comparison of MPC Architectures for a Heat Pump}},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2026,
- month = may,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-060}
- }
- , "A set-based approach for stable MPC with Minkowski cost functions", American Control Conference (ACC), May 2026.BibTeX TR2026-062 PDF
- @inproceedings{Leung2026may,
- author = {Leung, Jordan and Vinod, Abraham P.},
- title = {{A set-based approach for stable MPC with Minkowski cost functions}},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2026,
- month = may,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-062}
- }
- , "Robust Controllable Set Computation using Constrained Convex Generators", American Control Conference (ACC), May 2026.BibTeX TR2026-063 PDF
- @inproceedings{Silvestre2026may,
- author = {Silvestre, Daniel and Vinod, Abraham P.},
- title = {{Robust Controllable Set Computation using Constrained Convex Generators}},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2026,
- month = may,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-063}
- }
- , "Sequential Model Calibration of Vapor Compression Cycles using Approximate Bayesian Computation", American Control Conference (ACC), May 2026.BibTeX TR2026-061 PDF
- @inproceedings{Zinage2026may,
- author = {Zinage, Shrenik and Dixit, Vaibhav and Chakrabarty, Ankush and Qiao, Hongtao and Laughman, Christopher R. and Bilionis, Ilias and Deshpande, Vedang M.},
- title = {{Sequential Model Calibration of Vapor Compression Cycles using Approximate Bayesian Computation}},
- booktitle = {American Control Conference (ACC)},
- year = 2026,
- month = may,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-061}
- }
- , "ProxiCBO: A Consensus-based Method for Composite Optimization", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), May 2026.BibTeX TR2026-041 PDF
- @inproceedings{Zhang2026may,
- author = {Zhang, Haoyu and Ma, Yanting and Kitichotkul, Ruangrawee and Rapp, Joshua and Boufounos, Petros T.},
- title = {{ProxiCBO: A Consensus-based Method for Composite Optimization}},
- booktitle = {IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP)},
- year = 2026,
- month = may,
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-041}
- }
- , "Training Task Reasoning LLM Agents for Multi-turn Task Planning via Single-turn Reinforcement Learning", IEEE Control Systems Letters, DOI: 10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3642767, Vol. 9, pp. 2879-2884, February 2026.BibTeX TR2026-026 PDF
- @article{Hu2026feb,
- author = {Hu, Hanjiang and Liu, Changliu and Li, Na and Wang, Yebin},
- title = {{Training Task Reasoning LLM Agents for Multi-turn Task Planning via Single-turn Reinforcement Learning}},
- journal = {IEEE Control Systems Letters},
- year = 2026,
- volume = 9,
- pages = {2879--2884},
- month = feb,
- doi = {10.1109/LCSYS.2025.3642767},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-026}
- }
- , "Temporal Surrogate Lagrangian Decomposition for Operational Hosting Capacity Assessment In Unbalanced Power Distribution Systems", IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, DOI: 10.1109/TII.2025.3650721, February 2026.BibTeX TR2026-025 PDF
- @article{Qin2026feb,
- author = {Qin, Jingtao and Sun, Hongbo and Yu, Nanpeng and Guo, Jianlin and Wang, Ye and Raghunathan, Arvind},
- title = {{Temporal Surrogate Lagrangian Decomposition for Operational Hosting Capacity Assessment In Unbalanced Power Distribution Systems}},
- journal = {IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics},
- year = 2026,
- month = feb,
- doi = {10.1109/TII.2025.3650721},
- url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2026-025}
- }
- , "GPU-Accelerated Continuous-Time Successive Convexification for Contact-Implicit Legged Locomotion", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), June 2026.
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Videos
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Software & Data Downloads
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SAmple Consensus for Adaptive Graduated Non-Convexity -
Optimal Recursive McCormick Linearization of MultiLinear Programs -
Convex sets in Python -
Meta-Learning State Space Models -
Python-based Robotic Control & Optimization Package -
Template Embeddings for Adiabatic Quantum Computation -
Quasi-Newton Trust Region Policy Optimization -
Convergent Inverse Scattering using Optimization and Regularization
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