EAGER: Collaborative Research: III: Exploring Physics Guided Machine Learning for Accelerating Sensing and Physical Sciences

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As machine learning (ML) continues to revolutionize the commercial space including vision, speech, andtext recognition, there is great anticipation in the scientific community to unlock the power of ML foraccelerating scientific discovery. However, black-box ML models, which rely solely on training data andignore existing scientific knowledge have met with limited success in scientific problems, particularlywhen labeled data is limited, sometimes even leading to spectacular failures. This is because the blackbox ML models are susceptible to learning spurious relationships that do not generalize well outside thedata they are trained for. The emerging paradigm of physics-guided machine learning (PGML), whichleverages the unique ability of ML algorithms to automatically extract patterns and models from data withguidance of the knowledge accumulated in physics (or scientific theories), aims to address the challengesfaced by black box ML in scientific applications. Significant exploratory efforts are needed to formulate and assess sound PGML approaches for particular scientific problems.For data science, PGML has the potential to transform ML beyond black-box applications by enablingsolutions that generalize well even on unseen input-output distributions that are different from thoseencountered during training, by anchoring ML methods with the scientific body of knowledge. PGML makes a distinctdeparture from the conventional view that physics-based models and ML models are developed inisolation but seldom mixed together. The proposed project is fundamentally different from existing bodyof research that attempts to combine ML and domain sciences, e.g., by making use of domain-specificknowledge in ML algorithms in simplistic ways, or making use of data in the physics-based modelingprocess albeit without allowing data to change the functional forms of existing physics-based models. The tight interplay between data science and the domains of physics and sensing in the project lends itselfnaturally to diverse education activities that complement the research tasks outlined by our team. Over theduration of this one-year project, the team will develop an integrative course at the graduate level on "MLmeets Physics", which explores topical, emerging themes in this interdisciplinary area. Offerings of thecourse will draw upon course modules shared between the four universities, such as shared guest videosand case studies. The physics department at BU has a well-developed "Physics Outreach Project" thatannually performs science exhibitions for elementary schools in Binghamton metropolitan area, for whichthe team will create a new exhibition about neural networks and ML. In follow-on work, similar outreachevents will be replicated at schools (Robinson Middle School in Lowell and Metro STEM Middle Schoolin Columbus). The PIs are committed to increasing the diversity of involvement at various levels of thetraining ecosystem impacted by this project, and have planned various coordinated broader impactactivities for inclusion of female and underrepresented minority students as well as faculty.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.