About the Workshop
- This workshop’s primary objective is to connect diverse research communities and foster collaboration for the advancement of a compositional theory of decision making. As engineered systems grow in scale, heterogeneity, and interdependence, compositional approaches are becoming essential for principled design, analysis, and control.
- This workshop is open to participants from a wide range of backgrounds and experience levels, and is intended to be accessible to both newcomers and seasoned researchers. Attendees will gain insight into how applied category theory can be used as a practical language for reasoning about complex, interconnected decision-making problems.
- The program will feature tutorial-style introductions alongside research talks that highlight successful applications of categorical and compositional methods in control, dynamical systems, and networked and multi-agent systems. Distinguished speakers will present concrete tools, modeling frameworks, and case studies demonstrating how these ideas can be deployed in real-world engineering contexts.
- In addition to showcasing current results, this workshop aims to stimulate discussion around open challenges and emerging directions at the intersection of applied category theory and control, while continuing to build an interdisciplinary community around compositional approaches to decision making.
Speakers
James Fairbanks
University of Florida
Aaron Ames
Caltech
Hans Riess
Georgia Tech
Joe Moeller
Caltech
Matthew Hale
Georgia Tech
Wilmer Leal
University of Florida
Max de Sa
Caltech
Workshop Schedule
| Time | Speaker | Title / Event |
|---|---|---|
| 8:30 am – 9:00 am | Aaron Ames | Why We Need Category Theory in the Age of AI |
| 9:00 am – 9:30 am | Joe Moeller | Tutorial: Category Theory |
| 9:30 am – 10:00 am | Max de Sa | Layered Control Architectures: Constructions, Obstrutions, and Abstractions |
| 10:00 am – 10:30 am | - | Coffee Break |
| 10:30 am – 10:50 am | Joe Moeller | Control Coalgebras and Barrier Morphisms |
| 10:50 am – 11:10 am | Hans Riess | Tutorial: Applied Sheaf Theory |
| 11:10 am – 11:30 am | James Fairbanks | Compositional Modeling: Structures, Dynamics, Optimization |
| 11:30 am – 11:50 am | Wilmer Leal | Distributed Computation of Fixed Points in Combinatorial Threshold-Linear Networks via Sheaf Theory |
| 11:50 am – 12:00 pm | - | Small Break |
| 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm | Aaron Ames, Matthew Hale, James Faribanks | Panel Discussion |