About Me
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UC San Diego, specializing in dynamical systems and controls, studying under the supervision of Jorge Cortés. I completed my undergraduate education at UCLA, receiving a B.S. in Math and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 2018. I received an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UC San Diego in 2020.
My research interests lie at the intersection of control theory, optimization, dynamical systems, and network science. The following is a list of topics that I am currently working, or have previously worked, on:
- Control theory and systems biology: Understanding the complex behavior of coupled oscillator networks which arise in many biological applications including genetic regulatory networks, and neural networks.
- Systems theoretic foundations of optimization algorithms: With the perspective of iterative optimization algorithms as dynamical systems, using tools from nonlinear control to analyze their properties and systematically design new algorithms.
- Network neuroscience: Modeling the formation and propagation of epileptic seizures in neural tissue using nonlinear dynamical systems, and using these insights to design interventions to stop the spread of seizures.
- Data-driven control of network systems: Developing a predictive control scheme to stabilize linear network systems, where agents do not have knowledge of the underlying dynamics and must instead use sampled data.
Publications
Journal Publications
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Robinson’s Counterexample and Regularity Properties of Optimization-Based Controllers,
Pol Mestres, Ahmed Allibhoy, Jorge Cortés,
Systems and Control Letters, submitted [arXiv] -
Anytime Solvers for Variational Inequalities: the (Recursive) Safe Monotone Flows,
Ahmed Allibhoy, Jorge Cortés,
Automatica, submitted. [arXiv] -
Control-Barrier-Function-Based Design of Gradient Flows for Constrained Nonlinear Programming,
Ahmed Allibhoy, Jorge Cortés,
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 69, no. 6, 2024, to appear. [Full version (with appendix): arXiv] -
Optimal Network Interventions to Control the Spreading of Oscillations,
Ahmed Allibhoy, Federico Celi, Fabio Pasqualetti, Jorge Cortés,
IEEE Open Journal of Control Systems, vol. 1, pp. 141-151, 2022. -
Linear-threshold Dynamics for the Study of Epileptic Events,
Federico Celi, Ahmed Allibhoy, Fabio Pasqualetti, Jorge Cortés,
IEEE Control Systems Letters, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 1405-1410, 2021. [PDF] -
Data-based Receding Horizon Control of Linear Network Systems,
Ahmed Allibhoy, Jorge Cortés,
IEEE Control Systems Letters, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 1207-1212, 2021. [PDF]
Conference Publications
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Safety-Critical Control as a Design Paradigm of Anytime Solvers to Nonlinear Optimization Problems,
Ahmed Allibhoy, Jorge Cortés,
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Cancún, Mexico, pp. 6211-6216. [PDF] -
Anytime Solution of Constrained Nonlinear Programs via Control Barrier Functions,
Ahmed Allibhoy, Jorge Cortés,
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Austin, TX, December 2021, pp. 6520–6525. [PDF] -
Data-Driven Distributed Predictive Control via Network Optimization,
Ahmed Allibhoy, Jorge Cortés,
Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, Berkeley CA, June 2020, vol. 120, pp. 838-839.
Twitter Threads
Occasionally I do twitter threads on various topics from nonlinear dynamics, control theory, and optimization. Below is a list of all the threads I have done so far. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any suggestions for topics I should cover in the future!
What is a Lyapunov Function?
I attempt to give a high level introduction to the concept of a Lyapunov function, a tool used to certify the stability of a nonlinear dynamical system.
Vibrational control of mechanical systems or: How I learned to stop worrying and love open-loop control
I introduce the idea of vibrational control, where a high frequency oscillation stabilizes a mechanical system. I show that vibrational control can be used to stabilize an inverted pendulum.