October 2026
CE 4240: Modules 4–6 and Homework 3–4 are up
Linear system theory, drinking water networks, and traffic flow modules are now posted, along with Homework 3 and 4 and solutions for Homework 2 and 3. One module left in the semester.
Hey, I’m Ahmad
I teach engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville —
I work on the modeling, control, and learning of large-scale dynamical systems — power grids, water networks, transportation, and climate — and I write papers with mostly my students —
This site also holds the more personal side of things: writing, food, travel, and other interests that matter to me —
News & Updates
Recent papers, teaching updates, travel notes, and announcements from the past year.
September 11, 2026
New blog post on certifying uncontrollability
A new essay explains how infeasibility certificates from convex optimization can rapidly prove that a desired state-space maneuver cannot be reached.
September 2026
Two new preprints are online
Two recent works are now available as preprints: one accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehicles, and one conditionally accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.
September 2026
CE 4240 Fall 2026 page is live
The new Infrastructure Systems Engineering course page includes the syllabus, the first two modules, and the first two homework assignments. More course content will be added as it is developed.
August 2026
New essay: The Compression Was Never Free
A long-form piece on reduced-order models, compression, language, fashion, infrastructure, and the cost of throwing away hidden modes.
August 2026
Teaching Infrastructure Systems Engineering this Fall
An earlier offering of the class is now available online for anyone who wants a preview of the material.
August 2026
Back from a very long summer of travel
A new post collects some thoughts from the summer and a gallery of pictures from the trip.
August 2026
Jafar's first PhD paper appears online
The paper develops a large-scale optimization model for multimodal transportation networks.
July 2026
New ICML 2026 paper on anomaly detection
A new conference paper on anomaly detection appeared at the International Conference on Machine Learning. Congrats, Yilin.
Research Overview
My group develops theory and algorithms in control engineering, machine learning and AI, large-scale optimization, and network science, and validates them on the energy, water, transportation, and climate systems that society depends on. The figure is the map I keep coming back to: core methods in the center, application domains around them, and dashed arrows for the places where one infrastructure sector leans on another.
Methods and theory
- Control theory, dynamic systems, and nonlinear networked systems
- Machine learning and AI for dynamic systems: scientific machine learning, data-driven identification, and control-theoretic analysis of learning models
- Large-scale and combinatorial optimization under uncertainty
- Network science and graph theory
Application domains
- Electric power systems: stability, monitoring, and control
- Water systems: drinking water hydraulics and quality, stormwater, and real-time flood control
- Transportation and mobility: connected and autonomous vehicles, traffic control, and intermodal freight
- Climate and natural systems: catchment hydrology, hydrodynamics, and climate prediction and projection
A recurring theme is turning messy infrastructure questions into certificates, bounds, algorithms, or feedback laws that stay useful when models are nonlinear, data is incomplete, and uncertainty refuses to be polite. Lately that includes asking the same control-theoretic questions of learning models themselves: what a neural network or a language model can reach, steer, or certify.