Saber Jafarpour

Research Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering
University of Colorado Boulder
Email: saber.jafarpour@colorado.edu

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Representative Papers:

neuralnetwork NeurIPS SemiContraction SIREV
Efficient Interaction-aware Interval Analysis for Neural Network Feedback Loops, TAC, 2024, (pdf) Robust Implicit Networks via Non-Euclidean Contractions, NeurIPS, 2021, (pdf) Weak and Semi-Contractions for Network Systems and Diffusively-Coupled Oscillators, TAC, 2021, (pdf) Flow and Elastic Networks on the n-Torus, SIREV, 2021, (pdf)


Selected Research Papers:

The following papers are in reverse chronological order. For most of them, I have also included the arXiv version which might be slightly different from the published version. The asterisk * means these authors contributed equally.

Under review papers:
  1. Z. Liu, S. Jafarpour, and Y. Chen, Safety Verification of Stochastic Systems: A Set-Erosion Approach, Submitted , Sep. 2024.

  2. Z. Liu, S. Jafarpour, and Y. Chen, Probabilistic reachability of discrete-time nonlinear stochastic system, Submitted , Aug. 2024.

  3. S. Jafarpour*, Z. Liu*, and Y. Chen, Probabilistic reachability analysis of stochastic control systems, Submitted , July 2024. [arXiv]

Journal/CS-conference papers:
  1. S. Jafarpour and S. Coogan, Monotonicity and contraction on polyhedral cones, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, To appear, Aug. 2024. [Journal Version] [arXiv]

  2. S. Jafarpour*, A. Harapanahalli* and S. Coogan, Efficient Interaction-Aware Interval Analysis of Neural Network Feedback Loops, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control To apear, July 2024. [Journal version][arXiv]

  3. M. Pirani* and S. Jafarpour*, Network critical slowing down: Data-driven detection of critical transitions in nonlinear networks, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems , 11(2):573-585, 2024. [Journal Version][arXiv]

  4. S. Jafarpour, A. Davydov, and F. Bullo, Non-Euclidean Contraction Theory for Monotone and Positive Systems, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 68(9):5653-5660, 2023. [Journal version][arXiv]

  5. A. Harapanahalli, S. Jafarpour, and S. Coogan Forward Invariance in Neural Network Controlled Systems, IEEE Control Systems Letters, vol. 7, pp. 3962 - 3967, 2023. [Journal version]

  6. A. Davydov, S. Jafarpour, and F. Bullo, Non-Euclidean Contraction Theory for Robust Nonlinear Stability, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 67(12): 6667-6681, 2022. [Journal version][arXiv]

  7. S. Jafarpour, V. Purba, S. V. Dhople, B. Johnson, and F. Bullo, Singular Perturbation and Small-signal Stability for Inverter Networks, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, 9 (2):979-992, 2022. [Journal version][arXiv]

  8. K. D. Smith, S. Jafarpour, A. Swami, and F. Bullo, Topology Inference with Multivariate Cumulants: The Mobius Inference Algorithm, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 30(5): 2102-2116, 2022 [Journal version][arXiv]

  9. S. Jafarpour*, A. Davydov*, A. V. Proskurnikov, and F. Bullo, Robust Implicit Networks via Non-Euclidean Contractions, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 34: 9857-9868, 2021. [OpenReview][poster]

  10. S. Jafarpour, P. Cisneros-Velarde, and F. Bullo, Weak and Semi-Contraction for Network Systems and Diffusively-Coupled Oscillators, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 67(3):1285-1300, 2021. [Journal version][arXiv]

  11. S. Jafarpour, E. Y. Huang, K. D. Smith, and F. Bullo, Flow and Elastic Networks on the n-torus: Geometry, Analysis, and Computation, SIAM Review (Research Spotlight), 64(1):59-104, 2021. [Journal version][arXiv]

  12. P. Cisneros-Velarde, S. Jafarpour and F. Bullo, Distributed and time-varying primal-dual dynamics via contraction analysis, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 67(7): 3560-3566, 2021. [Journal version][arXiv]

  13. X. Duan, S. Jafarpour, and F. Bullo, Graph-Theoretic Small-Gain Theorems for Metzler Matrices and Monotone Systems, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 59(5):3447-3471, 2021. [Journal Version][arXiv]

  14. A. Silva, F. Kocayusufoglu, S. Jafarpour, A. Swami, F. Bullo, and A. K. Singh, Combining Physics and Machine Learning for Network Flow Estimation, 9th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) , Virtual Seminar, May 2021. [OpenReview]

  15. K. D. Smith, S. Jafarpour, and F. Bullo, Transient Stability of Droop-Controlled Inverter Networks with Operating Constraints, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 67(2): 633-645, 2021. [Journal version]

  16. V. Purba, B. Johnson, S. Jafarpour, F. Bullo, and S. V. Dhople. Dynamic Aggregation of Grid-tied Three-phase Inverters , IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, 35(2): 1520-1530, 2020. [Journal version]

  17. S. Jafarpour and F. Bullo, Synchronization of Kuramoto Oscillators via Cutset Projections, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 64(7):2830-2844, 2019. [Journal version][arXiv]

  18. S. Jafarpour, E. Y. Huang, and F. Bullo, Synchronization of Kuramoto Oscillators: Inverse Taylor Expansions, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 57(5):3388-3412, 2019. [Journal version]

  19. S. Jafarpour, On Small-time Local Controllability, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, 58(1):425-446, 2019. [Journal version][arXiv]

  20. M. George, S. Jafarpour, and F. Bullo, Markov Chains with Maximum Entropy for Robotic Surveillance, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 64(4):1566-1580, 2019. [Journal version]

  21. V. Purba, S. V. Dhople, M. Rodriguez, S. Jafarpour, F. Bullo, and B. Johnson, Reduced-order Aggregate Model for Parallel-connected Single-phase Inverters, IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, 34(2):824-837, 2019. [Journal version]

  22. S. Jafarpour and A. D. Lewis, Locally Convex Topologies and Control Theory, Mathematics of Control, Signals and Systems, 28(4):1-46, 2016. [Journal version]

Refereed Conference papers:
  1. S. Jafarpour and S. Coogan, A contracting dynamical system perspective toward interval Markov decision processes, 62nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), to appear, Dec. 2023 [arXiv]

  2. A. Harapanahalli and S. Jafarpour and S. Coogan, Contraction-Guided Adaptive Partitioning for Reachability Analysis of Neural Network Controlled Systems, 62nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), to appear, Dec. 2023 [arXiv]

  3. S. Jafarpour*, A. Harapanahalli*, S. Coogan, Interval Reachability of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems with Neural Network Controllers, 5th Annual Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference (L4DC), PMLR, 211:1-14, 2023. [PMLR][arXiv]

  4. A. Davydov*, S. Jafarpour*, M. Abate, F. Bullo, S. Coogan, Comparative Analysis of Interval Reachability for Robust Implicit and Feedforward Neural Networks, 61th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Dec. 2022. [Proceeding version] [arXiv]

  5. A. Davydov*, S. Jafarpour*, A. V. Proskurnikov, and F. Bullo, Non-Euclidean monotone opera- tor theory with applications to recurrent neural networks, 61th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), Dec. 2022. [Proceeding version] [arXiv]

  6. S. Jafarpour*, M. Abate*, A. Davydov*, F. Bullo, and S. Coogan, Robustness Certificates for Implicit Neural Networks: A Mixed Monotone Contractive Approach , Learning for Dynamics and Control Conference, Oral Presentation (Top 10% of the submissions), Stanford University, June 2022. [Proceeding version][arXiv]

  7. S. Jafarpour and S. Coogan, Resilience of Input Metering in Dynamic Flow Networks, 2022 American Control Conference , Atlanta, June 2022. [Proceeding version][arXiv]

  8. F. Bullo, P. Cisneros-Velarde, A. Davydov, and S. Jafarpour. From contraction theory to fixed point algorithms on Riemannian and non-Euclidean spaces, 60th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Dec. 2021. (Invited Tutorial Session) [arXiv]

  9. E. Y. Huang, S. Jafarpour, and F. Bullo, Synchronization of Coupled Oscillators: The Taylor Expansion of the Inverse Kuramoto Map , 57th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control , Miami, Florida, Dec. 2018. [arXiv][Proceedings version]

  10. V. Purba and S. V. Dhople and S. Jafarpour and F. Bullo and B. Johnson, Network-cognizant Model Reduction of Grid-tied Three-phase Inverters , 55th Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing , Monticello, Illinois, Oct. 2017. [Proceedings version]

  11. V. Purba and S. Jafarpour and B. Johnson and F. Bullo and S. V. Dhople, Reduced-order Structure-preserving Model for Parallel-connected Three-phase Grid-tied Inverters , 18th Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics , Stanford, California, July 2017. [Proceedings version]

  12. S. Jafarpour and A. D. Lewis, The Classical and Tautological Orbit Theorems, 22nd International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 2016. [Pdf]

  13. S. Jafarpour and A. D. Lewis, Real Analytic Control Systems, 53th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Los Angeles, California, Dec. 2014. [Pdf] [Proceedings version]
Books and Preprints:
  1. S. Jafarpour and A. D. Lewis, Time-varying Vector Fields and Their Flows, SpringerBriefs in Mathematics, Springer-Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-319-10139-2. [Pdf] [Springer version]

  2. S. Jafarpour, Local and Global Holomorphic Extensions of Time-varying Real Analytic Vector Fields, Preprint, 2016. [arXiv]

  3. S. Jafarpour and A. D. Lewis, Local Reachability of Control Systems in Étalé Lie Groupoids, Preprint, 2014. [Pdf]
PhD Thesis
  1. On the Role of Regularity in Mathematical Control Theory , PhD Thesis, Queen's University, Mar. 2016. [Pdf] [Slides]