diff --git a/projects/interpretable-ml.yml b/projects/interpretable-ml.yml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a8d20c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/projects/interpretable-ml.yml @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +--- +name: Towards Interpretable Machine Learning in High-Energy Physics +postdate: 2026-03-03 +categories: + - ML/AI +durations: + - Any +experiments: + - Any +skillset: + - Python + - ML +status: + - Available +project: + - Any +location: + - Any +commitment: + - Any +program: + - Any +shortdescription: Survey interpretability techniques for ML models used in HEP, and propose practical guidelines for the field. +description: > + Machine learning is now everywhere in particle physics — from identifying what kind of particle + created a jet, to filtering interesting collisions in real time, to generating simulated data. + These models work impressively well, but we often have little idea why they make the decisions + they do. + + A growing toolbox of interpretability methods exists — techniques like SHAP values and attention + maps can highlight which inputs matter most, feature importance rankings from decision trees can + reveal what a model has learned. A [Nature Reviews Physics commentary](https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-022-00456-0) argued + that interpretability is essential for ML in physics, yet there is no agreed-upon standard for + what "interpretable" even means in this context, let alone best practices for achieving it. + + In this project, you will survey and hands-on compare interpretability methods across different + ML tasks in high-energy physics. Starting from existing trained models, e.g. jet + classifiers, you will apply post-hoc explanation tools (such as + SHAP and attention visualisation), compare them against other alternatives, and ask: do these methods agree? Do they + reveal real physics? Can we reverse-engineer what a model has + learned and express it in terms a physicist would recognise? + + The main deliverable will be twofold — firstly a practical set of guidelines: when should HEP physicists use which + interpretability approach, what are the pitfalls, and where are the open problems? Secondly: an open source repository of + tools that can be used to understand ML models. + +contacts: + - name: Liv Våge + email: liv.helen.vage@cern.ch + +mentees: diff --git a/projects/logic-gate-nn.yml b/projects/logic-gate-nn.yml new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0956f41 --- /dev/null +++ b/projects/logic-gate-nn.yml @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +--- +name: Logic Gate Neural Networks for Jet Substructure Classification +postdate: 2026-03-03 +categories: + - ML/AI +durations: + - Any +experiments: + - Any +skillset: + - Python + - ML +status: + - Available +project: + - IRIS-HEP +location: + - Any +commitment: + - Any +program: + - IRIS-HEP fellow +shortdescription: Build ultra-fast jet classifiers with differentiable logic gate networks +description: > + At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), protons smash together billions of times per second, + producing sprays of particles called "jets." Figuring out what created each jet is one of the most + important classification problems in particle physics. Today's best classifiers use large neural networks, + but the LHC's trigger system needs to make decisions in under a microsecond on specialised hardware chips called FPGAs. These chips + are built from simple logic gates — tiny circuits that compute basic Boolean operations like AND, + OR, and XOR. + + So what if we built a neural network entirely out of those same logic gates? That's exactly what + differentiable logic gate networks do. Instead of multiplying numbers through layers of neurons, + they wire together simple Boolean operations and learn which gate to use at each position. A + [NeurIPS 2022 paper](https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.08277) showed how to train these networks with + standard gradient descent — and the results are staggering: they are among the fastest machine + learning models, capable of classifying over a million images per second on a single + CPU core. This idea has already been applied to jet classification as a benchmark task, alongside + related approaches like [LogicNets and PolyLUT](https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.07367), and real-time + jet classification on trigger hardware has been [demonstrated with latencies around 100 ns](https://doi.org/10.1088/2632-2153/ad5f10). + + In this project you will work with the [HLS4ML jet tagging dataset](https://zenodo.org/records/3602260), which contains simulated LHC jets across five classes + (gluon, light quark, W, Z, and top). Using our library [torchlogix])https://github.com/ligerlac/torchlogix) you'll build a logic gate network classifier + , benchmark it against conventional neural network baselines, and explore how accuracy + trades off against network size and depth. Stretch goals include comparing against other + logic-gate-based approaches or exploring what it takes to get these models running on real + hardware. + +contacts: + - name: Liv Våge + email: liv.helen.vage@cern.ch + - name: Lino Gerlach + email: lino.oscar.gerlach@cern.ch + +mentees: