SOLIR workshop participants gathered around a Rutgers Engineering banner
The SOLIR team at the inaugural kickoff workshop, held at Richard Weeks Hall of Engineering, Rutgers University, on October 19, 2026.
EXPLORE PRESENTATIONS

Presentations

October 19, 2026 · 5 slide decks

Explore the ideas shared at the SOLIR MURI kickoff workshop. View PDF slides in a new tab or download the PowerPoint presentations.

Presentation 01PPTX · 2.9 MB

Everything Wrong with Modern AI (and How SOLIR Is Going to Fix It)

John S. Hyatt

Army perspective

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Presentation 02PPTX · 5.3 MB

From One Source to Many Minds

Yuan An

A source-actor architecture for knowledge diffusion

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Presentation 03PDF · 1.1 MB

Learning and Controlling the Structure of Reasoning in Language Models

Soheil Feizi

Toward dynamic ontologies

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Presentation 04PDF · 2.3 MB

Communication-Efficient Learning & Inference

Hulya Seferoglu

Kickoff workshop presentation

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Presentation 05PDF · 8.9 MB

From data to functionality - towards an information theoretic ontology

Muriel Médard

Kickoff workshop presentation

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Richard Weeks Hall of Engineering

Dean's Conference Room
500 Bartholomew Road
Piscataway, NJ 08854

OPEN IN GOOGLE MAPS →

Schedule

Monday, October 19, 2026

Opening

Breakfast & Coffee

Welcome & Introductions

9:00–9:10 — Lead PI Welcome & SOLIR Introduction, Salim El Rouayheb
9:10–9:15 — Rutgers School of Engineering Welcome, SOE Leadership

Session I — Army Perspective & Thrust 1: Towards Ontological Information Theory

John Hyatt — DEVCOM ARL

9:15–9:45 — Talk: Army Perspective & Expectations
9:45–10:00 — Discussion

Muriel Médard — MIT

10:00–10:30 — Talk: From data to functionality - towards an information theoretic ontology
10:30–10:45 — Discussion

Coffee Break

Session II — Thrusts 1–2: Information Theory Meets Stochastic Ontologies

Yuan An — Drexel University

11:00–11:30 — Talk: From One Source to Many Minds: A source-actor architecture for knowledge diffusion
11:30–11:45 — Discussion

Soheil Feizi — University of Maryland

11:45–12:15 — Talk: Learning and Controlling the Structure of Reasoning in Language Models: Toward Dynamic Ontologies
12:15–12:30 — Discussion

Lunch

Session III — Thrust 3: Ontology-Guided Decentralized Algorithms

Hulya Seferoglu — University of Illinois Chicago

2:00–2:30 — Talk: Communication-Efficient Learning & Inference

Salim El Rouayheb — Rutgers University

2:45–3:15 — Talk: Resilience and Privacy in Decentralized Intelligence Towards Ontology-Guided Learning and Reasoning
3:15–3:30 — Discussion

Coffee Break / Informal Discussion

Group Discussion, Integration & Next Steps

Cross-Thrust Integration & Year-1 Priorities

Group discussion with all PIs and Army representatives.

Army Feedback & Next Steps

John Hyatt / DEVCOM ARL

Closing Remarks

Salim El Rouayheb

Evening

Poster Session

SOLIR Team Dinner