Multi-Physical Modeling

Optimal design & robust control through multi-physical modeling.

Our work involves the development of state-of-art modeling and simulation tools for complex, heterogeneous systems. We apply these models for the optimal design and robust control of a variety of systems including HVAC systems, zero-energy buildings, automobiles, and robotic systems.

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  • Researchers

  • Awards

    •  AWARD    Best Paper Award at SDEMPED 2023
      Date: August 30, 2023
      Awarded to: Bingnan Wang, Hiroshi Inoue, and Makoto Kanemaru
      MERL Contact: Bingnan Wang
      Research Areas: Applied Physics, Data Analytics, Multi-Physical Modeling
      Brief
      • MERL and Mitsubishi Electric's paper titled “Motor Eccentricity Fault Detection: Physics-Based and Data-Driven Approaches” was awarded one of three best paper awards at the 14th IEEE International Symposium on Diagnostics for Electric Machines, Power Electronics and Drives (SDEMPED 2023). MERL Senior Principal Research Scientist Bingnan Wang presented the paper and received the award at the symposium. Co-authors of the paper include Mitsubishi Electric researchers Hiroshi Inoue and Makoto Kanemaru.

        SDEMPED was established as the only international symposium entirely devoted to the diagnostics of electrical machines, power electronics and drives. It is now a regular biennial event. The 14th version, SDEMPED 2023 was held in Chania, Greece from August 28th to 31st, 2023.
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  • News & Events

    •  NEWS    MERL researchers present 7 papers at CDC 2024
      Date: December 16, 2024 - December 19, 2024
      Where: Milan, Italy
      MERL Contacts: Ankush Chakrabarty; Vedang M. Deshpande; Stefano Di Cairano; Abraham P. Vinod; Avishai Weiss; Gordon Wichern
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Control, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics
      Brief
      • MERL researchers presented 7 papers at the recently concluded Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) 2024 in Milan, Italy. The papers covered a wide range of topics including safety shielding for stochastic model predictive control, reinforcement learning using expert observations, physics-constrained meta learning for positioning, variational-Bayes Kalman filtering, Bayesian measurement masks for GNSS positioning, divert-feasible lunar landing, and centering and stochastic control using constrained zonotopes.

        As a sponsor of the conference, MERL maintained a booth for open discussions with researchers and students, and hosted a special session to discuss highlights of MERL research and work philosophy.

        In addition, Ankush Chakrabarty (Principal Research Scientist, Multiphysical Systems Team) was an invited speaker in the pre-conference Workshop on "Learning Dynamics From Data" where he gave a talk on few-shot meta-learning for black-box identification using data from similar systems.
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    •  NEWS    MERL Researchers to Present 2 Conference and 11 Workshop Papers at NeurIPS 2024
      Date: December 10, 2024 - December 15, 2024
      Where: Advances in Neural Processing Systems (NeurIPS)
      MERL Contacts: Petros T. Boufounos; Matthew Brand; Ankush Chakrabarty; Anoop Cherian; François Germain; Toshiaki Koike-Akino; Christopher R. Laughman; Jonathan Le Roux; Jing Liu; Suhas Lohit; Tim K. Marks; Yoshiki Masuyama; Kieran Parsons; Kuan-Chuan Peng; Diego Romeres; Pu (Perry) Wang; Ye Wang; Gordon Wichern
      Research Areas: Artificial Intelligence, Communications, Computational Sensing, Computer Vision, Control, Data Analytics, Dynamical Systems, Machine Learning, Multi-Physical Modeling, Optimization, Robotics, Signal Processing, Speech & Audio, Human-Computer Interaction, Information Security
      Brief
      • MERL researchers will attend and present the following papers at the 2024 Advances in Neural Processing Systems (NeurIPS) Conference and Workshops.

        1. "RETR: Multi-View Radar Detection Transformer for Indoor Perception" by Ryoma Yataka (Mitsubishi Electric), Adriano Cardace (Bologna University), Perry Wang (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Petros Boufounos (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Ryuhei Takahashi (Mitsubishi Electric). Main Conference. https://neurips.cc/virtual/2024/poster/95530

        2. "Evaluating Large Vision-and-Language Models on Children's Mathematical Olympiads" by Anoop Cherian (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Kuan-Chuan Peng (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Suhas Lohit (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Joanna Matthiesen (Math Kangaroo USA), Kevin Smith (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Josh Tenenbaum (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Main Conference, Datasets and Benchmarks track. https://neurips.cc/virtual/2024/poster/97639

        3. "Probabilistic Forecasting for Building Energy Systems: Are Time-Series Foundation Models The Answer?" by Young-Jin Park (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Jing Liu (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), François G Germain (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Ye Wang (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Toshiaki Koike-Akino (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Gordon Wichern (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Navid Azizan (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Christopher R. Laughman (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Ankush Chakrabarty (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories). Time Series in the Age of Large Models Workshop.

        4. "Forget to Flourish: Leveraging Model-Unlearning on Pretrained Language Models for Privacy Leakage" by Md Rafi Ur Rashid (Penn State University), Jing Liu (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Toshiaki Koike-Akino (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Shagufta Mehnaz (Penn State University), Ye Wang (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories). Workshop on Red Teaming GenAI: What Can We Learn from Adversaries?

        5. "Spatially-Aware Losses for Enhanced Neural Acoustic Fields" by Christopher Ick (New York University), Gordon Wichern (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Yoshiki Masuyama (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), François G Germain (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Jonathan Le Roux (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories). Audio Imagination Workshop.

        6. "FV-NeRV: Neural Compression for Free Viewpoint Videos" by Sorachi Kato (Osaka University), Takuya Fujihashi (Osaka University), Toshiaki Koike-Akino (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Takashi Watanabe (Osaka University). Machine Learning and Compression Workshop.

        7. "GPT Sonography: Hand Gesture Decoding from Forearm Ultrasound Images via VLM" by Keshav Bimbraw (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Ye Wang (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Jing Liu (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Toshiaki Koike-Akino (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories). AIM-FM: Advancements In Medical Foundation Models: Explainability, Robustness, Security, and Beyond Workshop.

        8. "Smoothed Embeddings for Robust Language Models" by Hase Ryo (Mitsubishi Electric), Md Rafi Ur Rashid (Penn State University), Ashley Lewis (Ohio State University), Jing Liu (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Toshiaki Koike-Akino (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Kieran Parsons (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Ye Wang (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories). Safe Generative AI Workshop.

        9. "Slaying the HyDRA: Parameter-Efficient Hyper Networks with Low-Displacement Rank Adaptation" by Xiangyu Chen (University of Kansas), Ye Wang (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Matthew Brand (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Pu Wang (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Jing Liu (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Toshiaki Koike-Akino (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories). Workshop on Adaptive Foundation Models.

        10. "Preference-based Multi-Objective Bayesian Optimization with Gradients" by Joshua Hang Sai Ip (University of California Berkeley), Ankush Chakrabarty (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Ali Mesbah (University of California Berkeley), Diego Romeres (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories). Workshop on Bayesian Decision-Making and Uncertainty. Lightning talk spotlight.

        11. "TR-BEACON: Shedding Light on Efficient Behavior Discovery in High-Dimensions with Trust-Region-based Bayesian Novelty Search" by Wei-Ting Tang (Ohio State University), Ankush Chakrabarty (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Joel A. Paulson (Ohio State University). Workshop on Bayesian Decision-Making and Uncertainty.

        12. "MEL-PETs Joint-Context Attack for the NeurIPS 2024 LLM Privacy Challenge Red Team Track" by Ye Wang (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Tsunato Nakai (Mitsubishi Electric), Jing Liu (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Toshiaki Koike-Akino (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Kento Oonishi (Mitsubishi Electric), Takuya Higashi (Mitsubishi Electric). LLM Privacy Challenge. Special Award for Practical Attack.

        13. "MEL-PETs Defense for the NeurIPS 2024 LLM Privacy Challenge Blue Team Track" by Jing Liu (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Ye Wang (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Toshiaki Koike-Akino (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Tsunato Nakai (Mitsubishi Electric), Kento Oonishi (Mitsubishi Electric), Takuya Higashi (Mitsubishi Electric). LLM Privacy Challenge. Won 3rd Place Award.

        MERL members also contributed to the organization of the Multimodal Algorithmic Reasoning (MAR) Workshop (https://marworkshop.github.io/neurips24/). Organizers: Anoop Cherian (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Kuan-Chuan Peng (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Suhas Lohit (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Honglu Zhou (Salesforce Research), Kevin Smith (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Tim K. Marks (Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories), Juan Carlos Niebles (Salesforce AI Research), Petar Veličković (Google DeepMind).
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  • Internships

    • ST0105: Internship - Surrogate Modeling for Sound Propagation

      MERL is seeking a motivated and qualified individual to work on fast surrogate models for sound emission and propagation from complex vibrating structures, with applications in HVAC noise reduction. The ideal candidate will be a PhD student in engineering or related fields with a solid background in frequency-domain acoustic modeling and numerical techniques for partial differential equations (PDEs). Preferred skills include knowledge of the boundary element method (BEM), data-driven modeling, and physics-informed machine learning. Publication of the results obtained during the internship is expected. The duration is expected to be at least 3 months with a flexible start date.

    • MS0098: Internship - Control and Estimation for Large-Scale Thermofluid Systems

      MERL is seeking a motivated graduate student to research methods for state and parameter estimation and optimization of large-scale systems for process applications. Representative applications include large vapor-compression cycles and other multiphysical systems for energy conversion that couple thermodynamic, fluid, and electrical domains. The ideal candidate would have a solid background in control and estimation, numerical methods, and optimization; strong programming skills and experience with Julia/Python/Matlab are also expected. Knowledge of the fundamental physics of thermofluid flows (e.g., thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics), nonlinear dynamics, or equation-oriented languages (Modelica, gPROMS) is a plus. The expected duration of this internship is 3 months.

    • EA0073: Internship - Fault Detection for Electric Machines

      MERL is seeking a motivated and qualified individual to conduct research on electric machine fault analysis and detection methods. Ideal candidates should be Ph.D. students with a solid background and publication record in one more research area on electric machines: electric and magnetic modeling, machine design and prototyping, harmonic analysis, fault detection, and predictive maintenance. Knowledge on data analysis and machine learning algorithms, and strong programming skills using Python/PyTorch are expected. Research experience on modeling and analysis of electric machines and fault diagnosis is desired. Senior Ph.D. students in related expertise, such as electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and applied physics are encouraged to apply. Start date for this internship is flexible and the duration is 3 months.


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  • Recent Publications

    •  Chakrabarty, A., Vanfretti, L., Wang, Y., Mineyuki, T., Zhan, S., Tang, W.-T., Paulson, J.A., Deshpande, V.M., Bortoff, S.A., Laughman, C.R., "Time-Series Generative Networks for Synthesizing Realistic Scenarios in Occupant-Centric Building Simulation", Building Simulation, April 2025.
      BibTeX TR2025-043 PDF
      • @article{Chakrabarty2025apr,
      • author = {Chakrabarty, Ankush and Vanfretti, Luigi and Wang, Ye and Mineyuki, Takuma and Zhan, Sicheng and Tang, Wei-Ting and Paulson, Joel A. and Deshpande, Vedang M. and Bortoff, Scott A. and Laughman, Christopher R.},
      • title = {{Time-Series Generative Networks for Synthesizing Realistic Scenarios in Occupant-Centric Building Simulation}},
      • journal = {Building Simulation},
      • year = 2025,
      • month = apr,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-043}
      • }
    •  Dong, Y., Yagyu, E., Matsuda, T., Teo, K.H., Lin, C., Rakheja, S., "An accurate electrical and thermal co-simulation framework for modeling high-temperature DC and pulsed I-V characteristics of GaN HEMTs", IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society, March 2025.
      BibTeX TR2025-041 PDF
      • @article{Dong2025mar,
      • author = {Dong, Yicong and Yagyu, Eiji and Matsuda, Takashi and Teo, Koon Hoo and Lin, Chungwei and Rakheja, Shaloo},
      • title = {{An accurate electrical and thermal co-simulation framework for modeling high-temperature DC and pulsed I-V characteristics of GaN HEMTs}},
      • journal = {IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society},
      • year = 2025,
      • month = mar,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-041}
      • }
    •  Park, Y.-J., Germain, F.G., Liu, J., Wang, Y., Koike-Akino, T., Wichern, G., Christopher R., , Azizan, N., Laughman, C.A., "Probabilistic Forecasting for Building Energy Systems: Are Time-Series Foundation Models The Answer?", Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), December 2024.
      BibTeX TR2025-001 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Park2024dec,
      • author = {Park, Young-Jin and Germain, François G and Liu, Jing and Wang, Ye and Koike-Akino, Toshiaki and Wichern, Gordon and Christopher R. and Azizan, Navid and Laughman, Chakrabarty, Ankush},
      • title = {{Probabilistic Forecasting for Building Energy Systems: Are Time-Series Foundation Models The Answer?}},
      • booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = dec,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2025-001}
      • }
    •  Tang, W.-T., Chakrabarty, A., Paulson, J.A., "TR-BEACON: Shedding Light on Efficient Behavior Discovery in High-Dimensional Spaces with Bayesian Novelty Search over Trust Regions", Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), December 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-167 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Tang2024dec,
      • author = {Tang, Wei-Ting and Chakrabarty, Ankush and Paulson, Joel A.},
      • title = {{TR-BEACON: Shedding Light on Efficient Behavior Discovery in High-Dimensional Spaces with Bayesian Novelty Search over Trust Regions}},
      • booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = dec,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-167}
      • }
    •  Xiang, X., Palash, R., Yagyu, E., Dunham, S., Teo, K.H., Chowdhury, N., "AI-assisted Field Plate Design of GaN HEMT Device", Advanced Theory and Simulation, DOI: 10.1002/​adts.202400347, October 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-152 PDF
      • @article{Xiang2024oct,
      • author = {Xiang, Xiaofeng and Palash, Rafid and Yagyu, Eiji and Dunham, Scott and Teo, Koon Hoo and Chowdhury, Nadim},
      • title = {{AI-assisted Field Plate Design of GaN HEMT Device}},
      • journal = {Advanced Theory and Simulation},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = oct,
      • doi = {10.1002/adts.202400347},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-152}
      • }
    •  Bortoff, S.A., Laughman, C.R., Deshpande, V.M., Qiao, H., "Fluid Property Functions in Polar and Parabolic Coordinates", American Modelica Conference, October 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-144 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Bortoff2024oct,
      • author = {Bortoff, Scott A. and Laughman, Christopher R. and Deshpande, Vedang M. and Qiao, Hongtao},
      • title = {{Fluid Property Functions in Polar and Parabolic Coordinates}},
      • booktitle = {American Modelica Conference},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = oct,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-144}
      • }
    •  Vanfretti, L., Laughman, C.R., Chakrabarty, A., "Integrating Generative Machine Learning Models and Physics-Based Models for Building Energy Simulation", American Modelica Conference, October 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-140 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Vanfretti2024oct,
      • author = {Vanfretti, Luigi and Laughman, Christopher R. and Chakrabarty, Ankush},
      • title = {{Integrating Generative Machine Learning Models and Physics-Based Models for Building Energy Simulation}},
      • booktitle = {American Modelica Conference},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = oct,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-140}
      • }
    •  Zhang, H., Wang, B., "Supervised Contrastive Learning for Electric Motor Bearing Fault Detection", International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM), September 2024.
      BibTeX TR2024-120 PDF
      • @inproceedings{Zhang2024sep,
      • author = {Zhang, Hengrui and Wang, Bingnan},
      • title = {{Supervised Contrastive Learning for Electric Motor Bearing Fault Detection}},
      • booktitle = {International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM)},
      • year = 2024,
      • month = sep,
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2024-120}
      • }
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