People

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Affiliations

• PI, Laboratory of Information and Decision Systems
• Member, Operations Research Center
• Member, Center for Computational Science and Engineering

Education

• B.Tech. 2002, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee
• M.S. 2004, University of Texas (UT) Austin
• Ph.D. 2011, University of California (UC) Berkeley

Research Interests

My research focuses on the design of control of infrastructure systems using game theory and optimization in networks. My group works on three main areas: (1) Resilient network control; (2) Information systems and incentive design; (3) Optimal resource allocation in large-scale infrastructure systems. By focusing on important questions in the domains of highway transportation, electric power distribution, and urban water networks, we develop new theory and design tools for improving the performance of critical infrastructure systems in the face of disruptions, both stochastic and adversarial.

Our agenda is to design network monitoring and control algorithms and economic incentive schemes that help infrastructure users and operators make optimal decisions in the presence of uncertainties. This agenda is supported by our approach to: (i) model the cyber-physical interactions in infrastructures and assess their vulnerabilities; (ii) develop tools to detect and respond to both local and network-level failures; and (iii) design incentive schemes that improve the aggregate levels of public good, while accounting for the dependencies and private information among strategic entities.

Teaching Interests

• 1.008 Engineering for a Sustainable World 
• 1.104 Sensing and Intelligent Systems
• 1.020 Engineering Sustainability: Analysis and Design
• 1.074 Multivariate Data Analysis
• 1.C01/C51 Machine Learning for Sustainable Systems
• 1.013 Senior Civil and Environmental Engineering Design (systems core advisor)
• 1.208 Resilient Networks

Awards and Honors

• MIT CEE, Distinguished Service and Leadership Award, 2023
• Samuel M. Seegal Prize (SoE) – inspiring students in pursuing and achieving excellence, 2022
• Earll M. Murman for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, 2022
• C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute Research Award, 2020
• MIT, Ole Madsen Mentoring Award – contributions to inspiring, mentoring & educating students, 2020
• MIT, Energy Initiative Research Award, 2020
• National Academy of Engineering, China-America Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, speaker, 2019
• MIT, Robert N. Noyce Career Development Professor, 2015-2018
• Google, Faculty Research Award, 2015
• National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, 2015
• Siebel Energy Institute, Research Award, 2015
• MIT, Solomon Buchsbaum AT&T Research Fund Award, 2012

Selected Publications

1. M. Dahan, L. Sela, and S. Amin, Network Inspection for Detecting Strategic Attacks, Operations Research (forthcoming), Mar 2021.
2. D. Shelar, S. Amin, and I. Hiskens, Evaluating Resilience of Electricity Distribution Networks via A Modification of Generalized Benders Decomposition Method, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, Feb 2021.
3. L. Jin, M. Čičić, K. H. Johansson, and S. Amin, Analysis and Design of Vehicle Platooning Operations on Mixed-Traffic Highways, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Oct 2020.
4. M. Dahan, S. Amin, and P. Jaillet, Probability Distributions on Partially Ordered Sets and Network Interdiction Games, Mathematics of Operations Research, Nov 2020.
5. M. Wu, S. Amin, and A. E. Ozdaglar, Value of Information in Bayesian Routing Games, Operations Research, vol. 69, no. 1, Dec 2020.
6. M. Wu and S. Amin, Securing Infrastructure Facilities: When does Proactive Defense Help?, Dynamic Games and Applications, Dec 2019.
7. J. Gaudio, S. Amin, and P. Jaillet, Exponential Convergence Rates for Stochastically Ordered Markov Processes under Perturbation, Systems and Control Letters, vol. 133, Nov 2019.
8. L. Jin and S. Amin, Analysis of a Stochastic Switching Model of Freeway Traffic Incidents, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 64., no. 3, Mar 2019.
9. A. C. Lee, M. Dahan, A. J. Weinert, and S. Amin, Leveraging sUAS for Infrastructure Network Exploration and Failure Isolation, Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, Feb 2019.
10. L. Jin and S. Amin, Stability of Fluid Queueing Systems with Parallel Servers and Stochastic Capacities, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 63, no. 11, Nov 2018.
11. L. Sela and S. Amin,  Robust Sensor Placement for Pipeline Monitoring: Mixed Integer and Greedy Optimization, Advanced Engineering Informatics, vol. 36, April 2018
12. Z. Khan and S. Amin, Bottleneck Model with Heterogeneous Information, Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, vol. 112, Jun 2018.
13. D. Shelar, S. Amin, and I. Hiskens,  Toward Resilience-Aware Resource Allocation and Dispatch in Electricity Distribution Networks, Energy Markets and Responsive Grids. The IMA Volumes in Mathematics and its Applications, 2018. 
14. D. Shelar and S. Amin, Security assessment of electricity distribution networks under DER Node compromises, IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, vol. 4, no. 1, Mar 2017.
15. L. Sela, W. Abbas, X. Koutsoukos, and S. Amin, Sensor placement for fault location identification in water networks: A minimum test cover approach, Automatica, vol. 72, Oct 2016.
16. L. Sela and S. Amin, Control of water systems: a geometric programming approach, Water Resources Research, vol. 51, no. 10, Oct 2015.
17. S. Amin, G. A. Schwartz, A. A. Cardenas, and S. S. Sastry,  Game-theoretic models of electricity theft detection in smart utility networks: providing new capabilities with advanced metering infrastructure, IEEE Control Systems, vol. 35, no. 1, Feb 2015.
18. W. Krichene, J. Reilly, S. Amin, and A. M. Bayen, Stackelberg routing on parallel networks with horizontal queues, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 59, no. 3, Mar 2014.
19. P. Loiseau, G. A. Schwartz, J. Musacchio, S. Amin, and S. S. Sastry, Incentive mechanisms for internet congestion management: Fixed-budget rebate versus time-of-day pricing, IEEE-ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 22, no. 2, Apr2014.
20. S. Amin, X. Litrico, S. S. Sastry, and A. M. Bayen, Cyber security of water SCADA systems—Part II: Attack detection using enhanced hydrodynamic models, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology (TCST), vol. 21, no. 5, 2013.
21. S. Amin, X. Litrico, S.S. Sastry, and A. M. Bayen, Cyber security of water SCADA systems – Part I: Analysis and experimentation of stealthy deception attacks, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, vol. 21, no. 5, 2013.
22. S. Amin, G. A. Schwartz, and S. S. Sastry, Security of interdependent and identical networked control systems, Automatica, vol. 49, no. 1, Jan. 2013.
23. S. Amin, F. M. Hante, and A. M. Bayen, Exponential stability of switched linear hyperbolic initial-boundary value problems, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, vol. 57, no. 2, Feb. 2012.
24. S. Amin, A.A. Cardenas, and S.S. Sastry, Safe and secure networked control systems under denial-of-service attacks, Conf. on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, 2009.
25. S. Amin, A. Abate, M. Prandini, J. Lygeros, and S.S. Sastry, Reachability analysis for controlled discrete time stochastic hybrid systems, Conf. on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control, 2006.