EDBT 2026 Demo / reviewers in the wild / expert
Luca Laurenti
dblp:164/5860
· DBLP profile ↗
30ranked-venue papers
1as first author
18since 2021 · last 2026
0000-0003-1190-6097ORCID · verified
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 18 · 11 since 2021Theory of computation · 10 · 1 first-author · 6 since 2021Graphics, computer vision, multimedia, augmented reality and games · 4 · 2 since 2021Software engineering, systems software and programming languages · 2 · 1 since 2021Applied, interdisciplinary, general and emerging computing · 2 · 1 since 2021Systems, architecture and hardware · 1
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Finite Neural Networks as Mixtures of Gaussian Processes: From Provable Error Bounds to Prior SelectionabstractInfinitely wide or deep neural networks (NNs) with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) parameters have been shown to be equivalent to Gaussian processes. Because of the favorable properties of Gaussian processes, this equivalence is commonly employed to analyze neural networks and has led to various breakthroughs over the years. However, neural networks and Gaussian processes are equivalent only in the limit; in the finite case there are currently no methods available to approximate a trained neural network with a Gaussian model with bounds on the approximation error. In this work, we present an algorithmic framework to approximate a neural network of finite width and depth, and with not necessarily i.i.d. parameters, with a mixture of Gaussian processes with bounds on the approximation error. In particular, we consider the Wasserstein distance to quantify the closeness between probabilistic models and, by relying on tools from optimal transport and Gaussian processes, we iteratively approximate the output distribution of each layer of the neural network as a mixture of Gaussian processes. Crucially, for any NN and $\epsilon >0$ our approach is able to return a mixture of Gaussian processes that is $\epsilon$-close to the NN at a finite set of input points. Furthermore, we rely on the differentiability of the resulting error bound to show how our approach can be employed to tune the parameters of a NN to mimic the functional behavior of a given Gaussian process, e.g., for prior selection in the context of Bayesian inference. We empirically investigate the effectiveness of our results on both regression and classification problems with various neural network architectures. Our experiments highlight how our results can represent an important step towards understanding neural network predictions and formally quantifying their uncertainty. Steven Adams, Andrea Patanè, Morteza Lahijanian, Luca Laurenti |
J. Mach. Learn. Res. | 4 |
| 2025 | Error Bounds for Gaussian Process Regression Under Bounded Support Noise with Applications to Safety CertificationabstractGaussian Process Regression (GPR) is a powerful and elegant method for learning complex functions from noisy data with a wide range of applications, including in safety-critical domains. Such applications have two key features: (i) they require rigorous error quantification, and (ii) the noise is often bounded and non-Gaussian due to, e.g., physical constraints. While error bounds for applying GPR in the presence of non-Gaussian noise exist, they tend to be overly restrictive and conservative in practice. In this paper, we provide novel error bounds for GPR under bounded support noise. Specifically, by relying on concentration inequalities and assuming that the latent function has low complexity in the reproducing kernel Hilbert space (RKHS) corresponding to the GP kernel, we derive both probabilistic and deterministic bounds on the error of the GPR. We show that these errors are substantially tighter than existing state-of-the-art bounds and are particularly well-suited for GPR with neural network kernels, i.e., Deep Kernel Learning (DKL). Furthermore, motivated by applications in safety-critical domains, we illustrate how these bounds can be combined with stochastic barrier functions to successfully quantify the safety probability of an unknown dynamical system from finite data. We validate the efficacy of our approach through several benchmarks and comparisons against existing bounds. The results show that our bounds are consistently smaller, and that DKLs can produce error bounds tighter than sample noise, significantly improving the safety probability of control systems. Robert Reed, Luca Laurenti, Morteza Lahijanian |
AAAI | 2 |
| 2025 | Memory-dependent abstractions of stochastic systems through the lens of transfer operatorsabstractWith the increasing ubiquity of safety-critical autonomous systems operating in uncertain environments, there is a need for mathematical methods for formal verification of stochastic models. Towards formally verifying properties of stochastic systems, methods based on discrete, finite Markov approximations - abstractions - thereof have surged in recent years. These are found in contexts where: either a) one only has partial, discrete observations of the underlying continuous stochastic process, or b) the original system is too complex to analyze, so one partitions the continuous state-space of the original system to construct a handleable, finite-state model thereof. In both cases, the abstraction is an approximation of the discrete stochastic process that arises precisely from the discretization of the underlying continuous process. The fact that the abstraction is Markov and the discrete process is not (even though the original one is) leads to approximation errors. Towards accounting for non-Markovianity, we introduce memory-dependent abstractions for stochastic systems, capturing dynamics with memory effects. Our contribution is twofold. First, we provide a formalism for memory-dependent abstractions based on transfer operators. Second, we quantify the approximation error by upper bounding the total variation distance between the true continuous state distribution and its discrete approximation. Adrien Banse, Giannis Delimpaltadakis, Luca Laurenti, Manuel Mazo 0002, Raphaël M. Jungers |
HSCC | 3 |
| 2025 | Scalable control synthesis for stochastic systems via structural IMDP abstractionsabstractThis paper introduces a novel abstraction-based framework for controller synthesis of nonlinear discrete-time stochastic systems. The focus is on probabilistic reach-avoid specifications. The framework is based on abstracting a stochastic system into a new class of robust Markov models, called orthogonally decoupled Interval Markov Decision Processes (odIMDPs). Specifically, an odIMDPs is a class of robust Markov processes, where the transition probabilities between each pair of states are uncertain and have the product form. We show that such a specific form in the transition probabilities allows one to build compositional abstractions of stochastic systems that, for each state, are only required to store the marginal probability bounds of the original system. This leads to improved memory complexity for our approach compared to commonly employed abstraction-based approaches. Furthermore, we show that an optimal control strategy for a odIMDPs can be computed by solving a set of linear problems. When the resulting strategy is mapped back to the original system, it is guaranteed to lead to reduced conservatism compared to existing approaches. To test our theoretical framework, we perform an extensive empirical comparison of our methods against Interval Markov Decision Process- and Markov Decision Process-based approaches on various benchmarks including 7D systems. Our empirical analysis shows that our approach substantially outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in terms of both memory requirements and the conservatism of the results. Frederik Baymler Mathiesen, Sofie Haesaert, Luca Laurenti |
HSCC | 3 |
| 2025 | Error Bounds for Physics-Informed Neural Networks in Fokker-Planck PDEsabstractStochastic differential equations are commonly used to describe the evolution of stochastic processes. The state uncertainty of such processes is best represented by the probability density function (PDF), whose evolution is governed by the Fokker-Planck partial differential equation (FP-PDE). However, it is generally infeasible to solve the FP-PDE in closed form. In this work, we show that physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) can be trained to approximate the solution PDF. Our main contribution is the analysis of PINN approximation error: we develop a theoretical framework to construct tight error bounds using PINNs. In addition, we derive a practical error bound that can be efficiently constructed with standard training methods. We discuss that this error-bound framework generalizes to approximate solutions of other linear PDEs. Empirical results on nonlinear, high-dimensional, and chaotic systems validate the correctness of our error bounds while demonstrating the scalability of PINNs and their significant computational speedup in obtaining accurate PDF solutions compared to the Monte Carlo approach. Chun-Wei Kong, Luca Laurenti, Jay W. McMahon, Morteza Lahijanian |
UAI | 2 |
| 2025 | On the Robustness of Bayesian Neural Networks to Adversarial AttacksabstractVulnerability to adversarial attacks is one of the principal hurdles to the adoption of deep learning in safety-critical applications. Despite significant efforts, both practical and theoretical, training deep learning models robust to adversarial attacks is still an open problem. In this article, we analyse the geometry of adversarial attacks in the over-parameterized limit for Bayesian neural networks (BNNs). We show that, in the limit, vulnerability to gradient-based attacks arises as a result of degeneracy in the data distribution, i.e., when the data lie on a lower dimensional submanifold of the ambient space. As a direct consequence, we demonstrate that in this limit, BNN posteriors are robust to gradient-based adversarial attacks. Crucially, by relying on the convergence of infinitely-wide BNNs to Gaussian processes (GPs), we prove that, under certain relatively mild assumptions, the expected gradient of the loss with respect to the BNN posterior distribution is vanishing, even when each NN sampled from the BNN posterior does not have vanishing gradients. The experimental results on the MNIST, Fashion MNIST, and a synthetic dataset with BNNs trained with Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and variational inference support this line of arguments, empirically showing that BNNs can display both high accuracy on clean data and robustness to both gradient-based and gradient-free adversarial attacks. Luca Bortolussi, Ginevra Carbone, Luca Laurenti, Andrea Patanè, Guido Sanguinetti, Matthew Wicker |
IEEE Trans. Neural Networks Learn. Syst. | 3 |
| 2024 | Adversarial Robustness Certification for Bayesian Neural NetworksabstractAbstract We study the problem of certifying the robustness of Bayesian neural networks (BNNs) to adversarial input perturbations. Specifically, we define two notions of robustness for BNNs in an adversarial setting: probabilistic robustness and decision robustness. The former deals with the probabilistic behaviour of the network, that is, it ensures robustness across different stochastic realisations of the network, while the latter provides guarantees for the overall (output) decision of the BNN. Although these robustness properties cannot be computed analytically, we present a unified computational framework for efficiently and formally bounding them. Our approach is based on weight interval sampling, integration and bound propagation techniques, and can be applied to BNNs with a large number of parameters independently of the (approximate) inference method employed to train the BNN. We evaluate the effectiveness of our method on tasks including airborne collision avoidance, medical imaging and autonomous driving, demonstrating that it can compute non-trivial guarantees on medium size images (i.e., over 16 thousand input parameters). Matthew Wicker, Andrea Patanè, Luca Laurenti, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska |
FM (1) | 3 |
| 2024 | Probabilistic reach-avoid for Bayesian neural networks
Matthew Wicker, Luca Laurenti, Andrea Patanè, Nicola Paoletti, Alessandro Abate, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska |
Artif. Intell. | 2 |
| 2023 | Interval Markov Decision Processes with Continuous Action-SpacesabstractInterval Markov Decision Processes (IMDPs) are finite-state uncertain Markov models, where the transition probabilities belong to intervals. Recently, there has been a surge of research on employing IMDPs as abstractions of stochastic systems for control synthesis. However, due to the absence of algorithms for synthesis over IMDPs with continuous action-spaces, the action-space is assumed discrete a-priori, which is a restrictive assumption for many applications. Motivated by this, we introduce continuous-action IMDPs (caIMDPs), where the bounds on transition probabilities are functions of the action variables, and study value iteration for maximizing expected cumulative rewards. Specifically, we decompose the max-min problem associated to value iteration to |𝒬| max problems, where |𝒬| is the number of states of the caIMDP. Then, exploiting the simple form of these max problems, we identify cases where value iteration over caIMDPs can be solved efficiently (e.g., with linear or convex programming). We also gain other interesting insights: e.g., in certain cases where the action set 𝒜 is a polytope, synthesis over a discrete-action IMDP, where the actions are the vertices of 𝒜, is sufficient for optimality. We demonstrate our results on a numerical example. Finally, we include a short discussion on employing caIMDPs as abstractions for control synthesis. Giannis Delimpaltadakis, Morteza Lahijanian, Manuel Mazo 0002, Luca Laurenti |
HSCC | 4 |
| 2023 | Distributionally Robust Strategy Synthesis for Switched Stochastic SystemsabstractWe present a novel framework for formal control of uncertain discrete-time switched stochastic systems against probabilistic reach-avoid specifications. In particular, we consider stochastic systems with additive noise, whose distribution lies in an ambiguity set of distributions that are ε − close to a nominal one according to the Wasserstein distance. For this class of systems we derive control synthesis algorithms that are robust against all these distributions and maximize the probability of satisfying a reach-avoid specification, defined as the probability of reaching a goal region while being safe. The framework we present first learns an abstraction of a switched stochastic system as a robust Markov decision process (robust MDP) by accounting for both the stochasticity of the system and the uncertainty in the noise distribution. Then, it synthesizes a strategy on the resulting robust MDP that maximizes the probability of satisfying the property and is robust to all uncertainty in the system. This strategy is then refined into a switching strategy for the original stochastic system. By exploiting tools from optimal transport and stochastic programming, we show that synthesizing such a strategy reduces to solving a set of linear programs, thus guaranteeing efficiency. We experimentally validate the efficacy of our framework on various case studies, including both linear and non-linear switched stochastic systems. Our results represent the first formal approach for control synthesis of stochastic systems with uncertain noise distribution. Ibon Gracia, Dimitris Boskos, Luca Laurenti, Manuel Mazo 0002 |
HSCC | 3 |
| 2023 | BNN-DP: Robustness Certification of Bayesian Neural Networks via Dynamic ProgrammingabstractIn this paper, we introduce BNN-DP, an efficient algorithmic framework for analysis of adversarial robustness of Bayesian Neural Networks (BNNs). Given a compact set of input points $T\subset \mathbb{R}^n$, BNN-DP computes lower and upper bounds on the BNN's predictions for all the points in $T$. The framework is based on an interpretation of BNNs as stochastic dynamical systems, which enables the use of Dynamic Programming (DP) algorithms to bound the prediction range along the layers of the network. Specifically, the method uses bound propagation techniques and convex relaxations to derive a backward recursion procedure to over-approximate the prediction range of the BNN with piecewise affine functions. The algorithm is general and can handle both regression and classification tasks. On a set of experiments on various regression and classification tasks and BNN architectures, we show that BNN-DP outperforms state-of-the-art methods by up to four orders of magnitude in both tightness of the bounds and computational efficiency. Steven Adams, Andrea Patanè, Morteza Lahijanian, Luca Laurenti |
ICML | 4 |
| 2023 | Physiologically-Informed Gaussian Processes for Interpretable Modelling of Psycho-Physiological StatesabstractThe widespread popularity of Machine Learning (ML) models in healthcare solutions has increased the demand for their interpretability and accountability. In this paper, we propose the Physiologically-Informed Gaussian Process (PhGP) classification model, an interpretable machine learning model founded on the Bayesian nature of Gaussian Processes (GPs). Specifically, we inject problem-specific domain knowledge of inherent physiological mechanisms underlying the psycho-physiological states as a prior distribution over the GP latent space. Thus, to estimate the hyper-parameters in PhGP, we rely on the information from raw physiological signals as well as the designed prior function encoding the physiologically-inspired modelling assumptions. Alongside this new model, we present novel interpretability metrics that highlight the most informative input regions that contribute to the GP prediction. We evaluate the ability of PhGP to provide an accurate and interpretable classification on three different datasets, including electrodermal activity (EDA) signals collected during emotional, painful, and stressful tasks. Our results demonstrate that, for all three tasks, recognition performance is improved by using the PhGP model compared to competitive methods. Moreover, PhGP is able to provide physiological sound interpretations over its predictions. Shadi Ghiasi, Andrea Patanè, Luca Laurenti, Claudio Gentili, Enzo Pasquale Scilingo, Alberto Greco 0001, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska |
IEEE J. Biomed. Health Informatics | 3 |
| 2022 | Individual Fairness Guarantees for Neural NetworksabstractWe consider the problem of certifying the individual fairness (IF) of feed-forward neural networks (NNs). In particular, we work with the epsilon-delta-IF formulation, which, given a NN and a similarity metric learnt from data, requires that the output difference between any pair of epsilon-similar individuals is bounded by a maximum decision tolerance delta >= 0. Working with a range of metrics, including the Mahalanobis distance, we propose a method to overapproximate the resulting optimisation problem using piecewise-linear functions to lower and upper bound the NN's non-linearities globally over the input space. We encode this computation as the solution of a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming problem and demonstrate that it can be used to compute IF guarantees on four datasets widely used for fairness benchmarking. We show how this formulation can be used to encourage models' fairness at training time by modifying the NN loss, and empirically confirm our approach yields NNs that are orders of magnitude fairer than state-of-the-art methods. Elias Benussi, Andrea Patanè, Matthew Wicker, Luca Laurenti, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska |
IJCAI | 4 |
| 2022 | Safety Guarantees for Neural Network Dynamic Systems via Stochastic Barrier FunctionsabstractNeural Networks (NNs) have been successfully employed to represent the state evolution of complex dynamical systems. Such models, referred to as NN dynamic models (NNDMs), use iterative noisy predictions of NN to estimate a distribution of system trajectories over time. Despite their accuracy, safety analysis of NNDMs is known to be a challenging problem and remains largely unexplored. To address this issue, in this paper, we introduce a method of providing safety guarantees for NNDMs. Our approach is based on stochastic barrier functions, whose relation with safety are analogous to that of Lyapunov functions with stability. We first show a method of synthesizing stochastic barrier functions for NNDMs via a convex optimization problem, which in turn provides a lower bound on the system's safety probability. A key step in our method is the employment of the recent convex approximation results for NNs to find piece-wise linear bounds, which allow the formulation of the barrier function synthesis problem as a sum-of-squares optimization program. If the obtained safety probability is above the desired threshold, the system is certified. Otherwise, we introduce a method of generating controls for the system that robustly minimize the unsafety probability in a minimally-invasive manner. We exploit the convexity property of the barrier function to formulate the optimal control synthesis problem as a linear program. Experimental results illustrate the efficacy of the method. Namely, they show that the method can scale to multi-dimensional NNDMs with multiple layers and hundreds of neurons per layer, and that the controller can significantly improve the safety probability. Rayan Mazouz, Karan Muvvala, Akash Ratheesh, Luca Laurenti, Morteza Lahijanian |
NeurIPS | 4 |
| 2022 | Adversarial Robustness Guarantees for Gaussian ProcessesabstractGaussian processes (GPs) enable principled computation of model uncertainty, making them attractive for safety-critical applications. Such scenarios demand that GP decisions are not only accurate, but also robust to perturbations. In this paper we present a framework to analyse adversarial robustness of GPs, defined as invariance of the model's decision to bounded perturbations. Given a compact subset of the input space $T\subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$, a point $x^*$ and a GP, we provide provable guarantees of adversarial robustness of the GP by computing lower and upper bounds on its prediction range in $T$. We develop a branch-and-bound scheme to refine the bounds and show, for any $\epsilon > 0$, that our algorithm is guaranteed to converge to values $\epsilon$-close to the actual values in finitely many iterations. The algorithm is anytime and can handle both regression and classification tasks, with analytical formulation for most kernels used in practice. We evaluate our methods on a collection of synthetic and standard benchmark data sets, including SPAM, MNIST and FashionMNIST. We study the effect of approximate inference techniques on robustness and demonstrate how our method can be used for interpretability. Our empirical results suggest that the adversarial robustness of GPs increases with accurate posterior estimation. Andrea Patanè, Arno Blaas, Luca Laurenti, Luca Cardelli, Stephen J. Roberts, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska |
J. Mach. Learn. Res. | 3 |
| 2021 | Bayesian Inference with Certifiable Adversarial RobustnessabstractWe consider adversarial training of deep neural networks through the lens of Bayesian learning and present a principled framework for adversarial training of Bayesian Neural Networks (BNNs) with certifiable guarantees. We rely on techniques from constraint relaxation of non-convex optimisation problems and modify the standard cross-entropy error model to enforce posterior robustness to worst-case perturbations in $\epsilon-$balls around input points. We illustrate how the resulting framework can be combined with methods commonly employed for approximate inference of BNNs. In an empirical investigation, we demonstrate that the presented approach enables training of certifiably robust models on MNIST, FashionMNIST, and CIFAR-10 and can also be beneficial for uncertainty calibration. Our method is the first to directly train certifiable BNNs, thus facilitating their deployment in safety-critical applications. Matthew Wicker, Luca Laurenti, Andrea Patanè, Zhoutong Chen, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska |
AISTATS | 2 |
| 2021 | Strategy synthesis for partially-known switched stochastic systemsabstractWe present a data-driven framework for strategy synthesis for partially-known switched stochastic systems. The properties of the system are specified using linear temporal logic (LTL) over finite traces (LTLf), which is as expressive as LTL and enables interpretations over finite behaviors. The framework first learns the unknown dynamics via Gaussian process regression. Then, it builds a formal abstraction of the switched system in terms of an uncertain Markov model, namely an Interval Markov Decision Process (IMDP), by accounting for both the stochastic behavior of the system and the uncertainty in the learning step. Then, we synthesize a strategy on the resulting IMDP that maximizes the satisfaction probability of the LTLf specification and is robust against all the uncertainties in the abstraction. This strategy is then refined into a switching strategy for the original stochastic system. We show that this strategy is near-optimal and provide a bound on its distance (error) to the optimal strategy. We experimentally validate our framework on various case studies, including both linear and non-linear switched stochastic systems. John Jackson, Luca Laurenti, Eric W. Frew, Morteza Lahijanian |
HSCC | 2 |
| 2021 | Certification of iterative predictions in Bayesian neural networksabstractWe consider the problem of computing reach-avoid probabilities for iterative predictions made with Bayesian neural network (BNN) models. Specifically, we leverage bound propagation techniques and backward recursion to compute lower bounds for the probability that trajectories of the BNN model reach a given set of states while avoiding a set of unsafe states. We use the lower bounds in the context of control and reinforcement learning to provide safety certification for given control policies, as well as to synthesize control policies that improve the certification bounds. On a set of benchmarks, we demonstrate that our framework can be employed to certify policies over BNNs predictions for problems of more than $10$ dimensions, and to effectively synthesize policies that significantly increase the lower bound on the satisfaction probability. Matthew Wicker, Luca Laurenti, Andrea Patanè, Nicola Paoletti, Alessandro Abate, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska |
UAI | 2 |
| 2020 | Adversarial Robustness Guarantees for Classification with Gaussian ProcessesabstractWe investigate adversarial robustness of Gaussian Process classification (GPC) models. Specifically, given a compact subset of the input space $T\subseteq \mathbb{R}^d$ enclosing a test point $x^*$ and a GPC trained on a dataset $\mathcal{D}$, we aim to compute the minimum and the maximum classification probability for the GPC over all the points in $T$.In order to do so, we show how functions lower- and upper-bounding the GPC output in $T$ can be derived, and implement those in a branch and bound optimisation algorithm. For any error threshold $\epsilon > 0$ selected \emph{a priori}, we show that our algorithm is guaranteed to reach values $\epsilon$-close to the actual values in finitely many iterations.We apply our method to investigate the robustness of GPC models on a 2D synthetic dataset, the SPAM dataset and a subset of the MNIST dataset, providing comparisons of different GPC training techniques, and show how our method can be used for interpretability analysis. Our empirical analysis suggests that GPC robustness increases with more accurate posterior estimation. Arno Blaas, Andrea Patanè, Luca Laurenti, Luca Cardelli, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska, Stephen J. Roberts |
AISTATS | 3 |
| 2020 | Uncertainty Quantification with Statistical Guarantees in End-to-End Autonomous Driving ControlabstractDeep neural network controllers for autonomous driving have recently benefited from significant performance improvements, and have begun deployment in the real world. Prior to their widespread adoption, safety guarantees are needed on the controller behaviour that properly take account of the uncertainty within the model as well as sensor noise. Bayesian neural networks, which assume a prior over the weights, have been shown capable of producing such uncertainty measures, but properties surrounding their safety have not yet been quantified for use in autonomous driving scenarios. In this paper, we develop a framework based on a state-of-the-art simulator for evaluating end-to-end Bayesian controllers. In addition to computing pointwise uncertainty measures that can be computed in real time and with statistical guarantees, we also provide a method for estimating the probability that, given a scenario, the controller keeps the car safe within a finite horizon. We experimentally evaluate the quality of uncertainty computation by three Bayesian inference methods in different scenarios and show how the uncertainty measures can be combined and calibrated for use in collision avoidance. Our results suggest that uncertainty estimates can greatly aid decision making in autonomous driving. Rhiannon Michelmore, Matthew Wicker, Luca Laurenti, Luca Cardelli, Yarin Gal, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska |
ICRA | 3 |
| 2020 | Robustness of Bayesian Neural Networks to Gradient-Based AttacksabstractVulnerability to adversarial attacks is one of the principal hurdles to the adoption of deep learning in safety-critical applications. Despite significant efforts, both practical and theoretical, the problem remains open. In this paper, we analyse the geometry of adversarial attacks in the large-data, overparametrized limit for Bayesian Neural Networks (BNNs). We show that, in the limit, vulnerability to gradient-based attacks arises as a result of degeneracy in the data distribution, i.e., when the data lies on a lower-dimensional submanifold of the ambient space. As a direct consequence, we demonstrate that in the limit BNN posteriors are robust to gradient-based adversarial attacks. Experimental results on the MNIST and Fashion MNIST datasets with BNNs trained with Hamiltonian Monte Carlo and Variational Inference support this line of argument, showing that BNNs can display both high accuracy and robustness to gradient based adversarial attacks. Ginevra Carbone, Matthew Wicker, Luca Laurenti, Andrea Patanè, Luca Bortolussi, Guido Sanguinetti |
NeurIPS | 3 |
| 2020 | Probabilistic Safety for Bayesian Neural NetworksabstractWe study probabilistic safety for Bayesian Neural Networks (BNNs) under adversarial input perturbations. Given a compact set of input points, $T \subseteq R^m$, we study the probability w.r.t. the BNN posterior that all the points in $T$ are mapped to the same region $S$ in the output space. In particular, this can be used to evaluate the probability that a network sampled from the BNN is vulnerable to adversarial attacks. We rely on relaxation techniques from non-convex optimization to develop a method for computing a lower bound on probabilistic safety for BNNs, deriving explicit procedures for the case of interval and linear function propagation techniques. We apply our methods to BNNs trained on a regression task, airborne collision avoidance, and MNIST, empirically showing that our approach allows one to certify probabilistic safety of BNNs with millions of parameters. Matthew Wicker, Luca Laurenti, Andrea Patanè, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska |
UAI | 2 |
| 2019 | Robustness Guarantees for Bayesian Inference with Gaussian ProcessesabstractBayesian inference and Gaussian processes are widely used in applications ranging from robotics and control to biological systems. Many of these applications are safety-critical and require a characterization of the uncertainty associated with the learning model and formal guarantees on its predictions. In this paper we define a robustness measure for Bayesian inference against input perturbations, given by the probability that, for a test point and a compact set in the input space containing the test point, the prediction of the learning model will remain δ−close for all the points in the set, for δ > 0. Such measures can be used to provide formal probabilistic guarantees for the absence of adversarial examples. By employing the theory of Gaussian processes, we derive upper bounds on the resulting robustness by utilising the Borell-TIS inequality, and propose algorithms for their computation. We evaluate our techniques on two examples, a GP regression problem and a fully-connected deep neural network, where we rely on weak convergence to GPs to study adversarial examples on the MNIST dataset. Luca Cardelli, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska, Luca Laurenti, Andrea Patanè |
AAAI | 3 |
| 2019 | Efficiency through uncertainty: scalable formal synthesis for stochastic hybrid systemsabstractThis work targets the development of an efficient abstraction method for formal analysis and control synthesis of discrete-time stochastic hybrid systems (SHS) with linear dynamics. The focus is on temporal logic specifications over both finite- and infinite-time horizons. The framework constructs a finite abstraction as a class of uncertain Markov models known as interval Markov decision process (IMDP). Then, a strategy that maximizes the satisfaction probability of the given specification is synthesized over the IMDP and mapped to the underlying SHS. In contrast to existing formal approaches, which are by and large limited to finite-time properties and rely on conservative over-approximations, we show that the exact abstraction error can be computed as a solution of convex optimization problems and can be embedded into the IMDP abstraction. This is later used in the synthesis step over both bounded- and unbounded-time properties, mitigating the known state-space explosion problem. Our experimental validation of the new approach compared to existing abstraction-based approaches shows: (i) significant (orders of magnitude) reduction of the abstraction error; (ii) marked speed-ups; and (iii) boosted scalability, allowing in particular to verify models with more than 10 continuous variables. Nathalie Cauchi, Luca Laurenti, Morteza Lahijanian, Alessandro Abate, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska, Luca Cardelli |
HSCC | 2 |
| 2019 | Statistical Guarantees for the Robustness of Bayesian Neural NetworksabstractWe introduce a probabilistic robustness measure for Bayesian Neural Networks (BNNs), defined as the probability that, given a test point, there exists a point within a bounded set such that the BNN prediction differs between the two. Such a measure can be used, for instance, to quantify the probability of the existence of adversarial examples. Building on statistical verification techniques for probabilistic models, we develop a framework that allows us to estimate probabilistic robustness for a BNN with statistical guarantees, i.e., with a priori error and confidence bounds. We provide experimental comparison for several approximate BNN inference techniques on image classification tasks associated to MNIST and a two-class subset of the GTSRB dataset. Our results enable quantification of uncertainty of BNN predictions in adversarial settings. Luca Cardelli, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska, Luca Laurenti, Nicola Paoletti, Andrea Patanè, Matthew Wicker |
IJCAI | 3 |
| 2019 | Central Limit Model CheckingabstractWe consider probabilistic model checking for continuous-time Markov chains (CTMCs) induced from Stochastic Reaction Networks against a fragment of Continuous Stochastic Logic (CSL) extended with reward operators. Classical numerical algorithms for CSL model checking based on uniformisation are limited to finite CTMCs and suffer from exponential growth of the state space with respect to the number of species. However, approximate techniques such as mean-field approximations and simulations combined with statistical inference are more scalable but can be time-consuming and do not support the full expressiveness of CSL. In this article, we employ a continuous-space approximation of the CTMC in terms of a Gaussian process based on the Central Limit Approximation, also known as the Linear Noise Approximation, whose solution requires solving a number of differential equations that is quadratic in the number of species and independent of the population size. We then develop efficient and scalable approximate model checking algorithms on the resulting Gaussian process, where we restrict the target regions for probabilistic reachability to convex polytopes. This allows us to derive an abstraction in terms of a time-inhomogeneous discrete-time Markov chain (DTMC), whose dimension is independent of the number of species, on which model checking is performed. Using results from probability theory, we prove the convergence in distribution of our algorithms to the corresponding measures on the original CTMC. We implement the techniques and, on a set of examples, demonstrate that they allow us to overcome the state space explosion problem, while still correctly characterizing the stochastic behaviour of the system. Our methods can be used for formal analysis of a wide range of distributed stochastic systems, including biochemical systems, sensor networks, and population protocols. Luca Bortolussi, Luca Cardelli, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska, Luca Laurenti |
ACM Trans. Comput. Log. | 4 |
| 2018 | Programming discrete distributions with chemical reaction networks
Luca Cardelli, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska, Luca Laurenti |
Nat. Comput. | 3 |
| 2017 | Syntax-Guided Optimal Synthesis for Chemical Reaction Networks
Luca Cardelli, Milan Ceska 0002, Martin Fränzle, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska, Luca Laurenti, Nicola Paoletti, Max Whitby |
CAV (2) | 5 |
| 2017 | Reachability Computation for Switching Diffusions: Finite Abstractions with Certifiable and Tuneable PrecisionabstractWe consider continuous time stochastic hybrid systems with no resets and continuous dynamics described by linear stochastic differential equations -- models also known as switching diffusions. We show that for this class of models reachability (and dually, safety) properties can be studied on an abstraction defined in terms of a discrete time and finite space Markov chain (DTMC), with provable error bounds. The technical contribution of the paper is a characterization of the uniform convergence of the time discretization of such stochastic processes with respect to safety properties. This allows us to newly provide a complete and sound numerical procedure for reachability and safety computation over switching diffusions. Luca Laurenti, Alessandro Abate, Luca Bortolussi, Luca Cardelli, Milan Ceska 0002, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska |
HSCC | 1 |
| 2016 | Programming Discrete Distributions with Chemical Reaction NetworksabstractWe explore the range of probabilistic behaviours that can be engineered with Chemical Reaction Networks (CRNs). We give methods to "program" CRNs so that their steady state is chosen from some desired target distribution that has finite support in [Formula: see text], with [Formula: see text]. Moreover, any distribution with countable infinite support can be approximated with arbitrarily small error under the [Formula: see text] norm. We also give optimized schemes for special distributions, including the uniform distribution. Finally, we formulate a calculus to compute on distributions that is complete for finite support distributions, and can be compiled to a restricted class of CRNs that at steady state realize those distributions. Luca Cardelli, Marta Z. Kwiatkowska, Luca Laurenti |
DNA | 3 |