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Creators/Authors contains: "Dwyer, Matthew B."

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  1. Abstract Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are increasingly deployed in critical applications, where ensuring their safety and robustness is paramount. We present$$_\text {CAV25}$$ CAV 25 , a high-performance DNN verification tool that uses the DPLL(T) framework and supports a wide-range of network architectures and activation functions. Since its debut in VNN-COMP’23, in which it achieved the New Participant Award and ranked 4th overall,$$_\text {CAV25}$$ CAV 25 has advanced significantly, achieving second place in VNN-COMP’24. This paper presents and evaluates the latest development of$$_\text {CAV25}$$ CAV 25 , focusing on the versatility, ease of use, and competitive performance of the tool.$$_\text {CAV25}$$ CAV 25 is available at:https://github.com/dynaroars/neuralsat. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available July 22, 2026
  2. Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 26, 2026
  3. Free, publicly-accessible full text available May 1, 2026
  4. There is a growing trend toward AI systems interacting with humans to revolutionize a range of application domains such as healthcare and transportation. However, unsafe human-machine interaction can lead to catastrophic failures. We propose a novel approach that predicts future states by accounting for the uncertainty of human interaction, monitors whether predictions satisfy or violate safety requirements, and adapts control actions based on the predictive monitoring results. Specifically, we develop a new quantitative predictive monitor based on Signal Temporal Logic with Uncertainty (STL-U) to compute a robustness degree interval, which indicates the extent to which a sequence of uncertain predictions satisfies or violates an STL-U requirement. We also develop a new loss function to guide the uncertainty calibration of Bayesian deep learning and a new adaptive control method, both of which leverage STL-U quantitative predictive monitoring results. We apply the proposed approach to two case studies: Type 1 Diabetes management and semi-autonomous driving. Experiments show that the proposed approach improves safety and effectiveness in both case studies. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available April 11, 2026
  5. Deep Neural Networks (DNN) have emerged as an effective approach to tackling real-world problems. However, like human-written software, DNNs are susceptible to bugs and attacks. This has generated significant interests in developing effective and scalable DNN verification techniques and tools. Recent developments in DNN verification have highlighted the potential of constraint-solving approaches that combine abstraction techniques with SAT solving. Abstraction approaches are effective at precisely encode neuron behavior when it is linear, but they lead to overapproximation and combinatorial scaling when behavior is non-linear. SAT approaches in DNN verification have incorporated standard DPLL techniques, but have overlooked important optimizations found in modern SAT solvers that help them scale on industrial benchmarks. In this paper, we present VeriStable, a novel extension of recently proposed DPLL-based constraint DNN verification approach. VeriStable leverages the insight that while neuron behavior may be non-linear across the entire DNN input space, at intermediate states computed during verification many neurons may be constrained to have linear behavior – these neurons are stable. Efficiently detecting stable neurons reduces combinatorial complexity without compromising the precision of abstractions. Moreover, the structure of clauses arising in DNN verification problems shares important characteristics with industrial SAT benchmarks. We adapt and incorporate multi-threading and restart optimizations targeting those characteristics to further optimize DPLL-based DNN verification. We evaluate the effectiveness of VeriStable across a range of challenging benchmarks including fully- connected feedforward networks (FNNs), convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and residual networks (ResNets) applied to the standard MNIST and CIFAR datasets. Preliminary results show that VeriStable is competitive and outperforms state-of-the-art DNN verification tools, including 𝛼-𝛽-CROWN and MN-BaB, the first and second performers of the VNN-COMP, respectively. 
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  6. Deep Neural Networks (DNN) have emerged as an effective approach to tackling real-world problems. However, like human-written software, DNNs are susceptible to bugs and attacks. This has generated significant interest in developing effective and scalable DNN verification techniques and tools. Recent developments in DNN verification have highlighted the potential of constraint-solving approaches that combine abstraction techniques with SAT solving. Abstraction approaches are effective at precisely encoding neuron behavior when it is linear, but they lead to overapproximation and combinatorial scaling when behavior is non-linear. SAT approaches in DNN verification have incorporated standard DPLL techniques, but have overlooked important optimizations found in modern SAT solvers that help them scale on industrial benchmarks. In this paper, we present VeriStable, a novel extension of the recently proposed DPLL-based constraint DNN verification approach. VeriStable leverages the insight that while neuron behavior may be non-linear across the entire DNN input space, at intermediate states computed during verification many neurons may be constrained to have linear behavior – these neurons are stable. Efficiently detecting stable neurons reduces combinatorial complexity without compromising the precision of abstractions. Moreover, the structure of clauses arising in DNN verification problems shares important characteristics with industrial SAT benchmarks. We adapt and incorporate multi-threading and restart optimizations targeting those characteristics to further optimize DPLL-based DNN verification. We evaluate the effectiveness of VeriStable across a range of challenging benchmarks including fully- connected feedforward networks (FNNs), convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and residual networks (ResNets) applied to the standard MNIST and CIFAR datasets. Preliminary results show that VeriStable is competitive and outperforms state-of-the-art DNN verification tools, including α-β-CROWN and MN-BaB, the first and second performers of the VNN-COMP, respectively. 
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  7. Many deep generative models, such as variational autoencoders (VAEs) and generative adversarial networks (GANs), learn an immersion mapping from a standard normal distribution in a low-dimensional latent space into a higher-dimensional data space. As such, these mappings are only capable of producing simple data topologies, i.e., those equivalent to an immersion of Euclidean space. In this work, we demonstrate the limitations of such latent space generative models when trained on data distributions with non-trivial topologies. We do this by training these models on synthetic image datasets with known topologies (spheres, torii, etc.). We then show how this results in failures of both data generation as well as data interpolation. Next, we compare this behavior to two classes of deep generative models that in principle allow for more complex data topologies. First, we look at chart autoencoders (CAEs), which construct a smooth data manifold from multiple latent space chart mappings. Second, we explore score-based models, e.g., denoising diffusion probabilistic models, which estimate gradients of the data distribution without resorting to an explicit mapping to a latent space. Our results show that these models do demonstrate improved ability over latent space models in modeling data distributions with complex topologies, however, challenges still remain. 
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