Ben Wooding
Postdoctoral Scholar (Research) – Vanderbilt University
I am a Postdoc at the Institute for Software Integrated Systems, Vanderbilt University, working in Taylor T. Johnson’s group. My research sits at the intersection of formal methods, machine learning and cyber-physical systems, with the goal of providing provable guarantees for how systems and models behave. These include, but are not limited to: robustness to perturbations, stability, safety, resilience, reachability, invariance, and fairness; both worst-case and probabilistic guarantees, and for systems with known or (aleatoric/epistemic) uncertain models.
I am a lead author of the open-source tools IMPaCT, PRoTECT, and TRUST, a contributor to NNV3 and n2v, and co-lead of the AINNCS category of the ARCH-COMP verification competition. I completed my PhD in formal methods for cyber-physical systems at Newcastle University in 2023, supervised by Sadegh Soudjani, and went on to hold an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Research Fellowship on reliable AI-enabled design of cyber-physical systems. During the fellowship, I was invited to present my research at several international universities.
I have contributed to the international academic community with published works, conference presentations, program committee memberships, and paper reviews. I am publicity chair for VNN-COMP 2026, a Program Committee member for FMAS 2026, and I contributed to a AAAI tutorial. Published works of particular note are conference works at ADHS, ATVA, CDC, ECC, HSCC, ICCPS, ICTAC, NeuS, QEST+FORMATS, SAIV, and the ARCH Competition, and journal works in NAHS and ES:WR&T. I contributed two chapters to the book Active Building Energy Systems: Operation and Control.
At Vanderbilt University, I have given a couple lectures for the Advanced Graduate Course: Automated Verification (CS6315). I attended the Academy of College Teaching (ACT 2026S) workshop series to prepare for college level teaching, and the Postdoctoral Mentoring Skills Workshop at Vanderbilt University. I have worked on the DAINS (Dependable AI for National Security) project, collaborating with the Air Force Research Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
At Newcastle University, I was the chair of AMBER (involved coordinating regular seminars), gave multiple internal research presentations, and assisted widely by teaching as a demonstrator and with marking. I have experience with supervising PhD, MSc and BSc student projects. Alongside these, I previously led the team for research communication and dissemination for the HyCoDeV Lab.
I completed an integrated Masters degree in Computer Science (Security and Resilience) with 1st Class Honours (2019) also at Newcastle University. For the project and dissertation, I received 92%.
Google Scholar
Funding & Awards
- EPSRC Doctoral Prize Research Fellowship, £93,000 [7% acceptance] (Nov 2023 – Nov 2025)
- A logic-based resilience metric for water resource recovery facilities chosen for the themed collection Highlights from Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology in 2024 [1 of 20 papers — 8.5% of eligible papers]
- EPSRC PhD Studentship, £68,362 (2019–2023) – funding secured by Sadegh Soudjani
- Newcastle University Sports Scholarship (2015–2020)
Workshop, Tutorial & Competition Organization
- ARCH-COMP 2026 – Category Co-Lead: Artificial Intelligence and Neural Network Control Systems (AINNCS) category of the ARCH friendly competition
- VNN-COMP 2026 – Publicity Chair: The Verification of Neural Networks Competition (VNN-COMP) – co-located with SAIV
- AAAI 2026 – Workshop Contributor: The Verification of Neural Networks Competition (VNN-COMP): A Lab for Benchmark Proposers, Verification Tool Participants, and the Broader AI Community – LH03
- CPS-IoT Week 2021 -Website Chair: Verification of Autonomous & Robotic Systems (VARS) Workshop
In-Person Invited Talks
- Max Planck Institute, Germany – Institute for Software Systems (SWS) – August 2025
- UC Louvain, Belgium – Cyber-Physical Systems lab – June 2025
- Newcastle University, UK – Open Research Conference – June 2025
- Vanderbilt University, USA – Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) – May 2025
- TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands – Control Systems Technology Group (CST) – Feb 2025
- Lancaster University, UK – School of Computing and Communications – Dec 2024
- Kings College London, UK – Software Systems Group (SSY) – Nov 2024
- Edinburgh University, UK – Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour (IPAB) – Nov 2024
- Durham University, UK – Scientific Computing Group (SciComp) – Nov 2024
- Newcastle University, UK – PARTNERS24 ‘Ask the Experts’ event – July 2024
Reviewing Activities
Formal Methods
Control
Machine Learning & AI
Autonomous Vehicles & Cyber-Physical Systems
Environment & Energy
Miscellaneous
Publications (Google Scholar)
| Title | Cited by | Year |
|---|---|---|
|
ARCH-COMP26 Category Report: Continuous and Hybrid Systems with Nonlinear Dynamics
L Geretti, JAD Sandretto, M Althoff, L Benet, P Collins, M Forets, S Mitsch, ... Proceedings of the 13th International Workshop on Applied Verification for …, 2026 |
2 | 2026 |
|
A Self-correcting Neuro-symbolic AI Reasoning Framework
B Wooding*, K Brennan*, AM Tumlin, H Zhang, TT Johnson International Symposium on AI Verification, 191-211, 2026 |
2026 | |
|
ARCH-COMP26 Category Report: Artificial Intelligence and Neural Network Control Systems (AINNCS) for Continuous and Hybrid Systems Plants
S Sasaki, B Wooding, TT Johnson, M Althoff, L Benet, S Coogan, M Forets, ... 13th International Workshop on Applied Verification for Continuous and …, 2026 |
2026 | |
|
k-Inductive Neural Barrier Certificates for Unknown Nonlinear Dynamics
B Wooding, H Zhang, TT Johnson, A Lavaei 3rd International Conference on Neuro-Symbolic Systems (NeuS), 2026 |
2026 | |
|
MetaMoE: Formal Verification of Compositional Robustness and Scalability of Mixture-of-Experts Architecture
Q Pham, B Wooding, L Nam, S Sasaki, TT Johnson International Symposium on AI Verification, 167-190, 2026 |
2026 | |
|
n2v: Neural Network Verification in Python (Competition Contribution)
S Sasaki, B Wooding, HD Wang, AM Tumlin, M Ma, TT Johnson International Symposium on AI Verification, 394-400, 2026 |
2026 | |
|
Reachability-Based Formal Verification of Graph Neural Networks with Node and Edge Features
AM Tumlin, B Wooding, Z Shao, DM Lopez, T Derr, TT Johnson International Symposium on AI Verification, 271-298, 2026 |
2026 | |
|
ARCH-COMP25 Category Report: Stochastic Models
A Abate, O Akbarzadeh, HAP Blom, S Haesaert, S Hassani, A Lavaei, ... 12th International Workshop on Applied Verification for Continuous and …, 2025 |
20 | 2025 |
|
PRoTECT: Parallelized ConstRuction of SafeTy BarriEr Certificates for Nonlinear Polynomial SysTems
B Wooding, V Horbanov, A Lavaei International Colloquium on Theoretical Aspects of Computing, 448-458, 2025 |
20 | 2025 |
|
A logic-based resilience metric for water resource recovery facilities
AS Laino, B Wooding, S Soudjani, RJ Davenport Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology 11 (2), 377-392, 2025 |
10 | 2025 |
|
PRoTECT: Parallel construction of barrier certificates for safety verification of polynomial systems
B Wooding, V Horbanov, A Lavaei Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 16th International Conference on Cyber-Physical …, 2025 |
6 | 2025 |
|
TRUST: StabiliTy and Safety ContRoller Synthesis for Unknown Dynamical Models Using a Single Trajectory
J Gardner*, B Wooding*, A Nejati, A Lavaei Proceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Hybrid Systems …, 2025 |
4 | 2025 |
|
Proving the Correctness of CANDO3 Optrode Command Interface VDM model in Isabelle/HOL
L Freitas, B Wooding, B Scott, A Pollitt, P Degenaar Proceedings of the 23rd International Overture Workshop, 2025 |
2025 | |
|
Data-driven abstraction-based control synthesis
M Kazemi*, R Majumdar, M Salamati*, S Soudjani, B Wooding* Nonlinear Analysis: Hybrid Systems 52, 2024 |
52 | 2024 |
|
IMPaCT: Interval MDP Parallel Construction for Controller Synthesis of Large-Scale STochastic Systems
B Wooding, A Lavaei International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of Systems and Formal …, 2024 |
13 | 2024 |
|
Data-driven abstractions via binary-tree Gaussian processes for formal verification
O Schön, S Naseer, B Wooding, S Soudjani 8th IFAC Conference on Analysis and Design of Hybrid Systems (ADHS) 58 (11 …, 2024 |
9 | 2024 |
|
Learning k-inductive control barrier certificates for unknown nonlinear dynamics beyond polynomials
B Wooding, A Lavaei arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.07232, 2024 |
9 | 2024 |
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IMPaCT: A parallelized software tool for IMDP construction and controller synthesis with convergence guarantees
B Wooding, A Lavaei Proceedings of the 27th ACM International Conference on Hybrid Systems …, 2024 |
5 | 2024 |
|
Formal control of new England 39-bus test system: an assume-guarantee approach
B Wooding, A Lavaei, S Soudjani arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.03467, 2023 |
9 | 2023 |
|
Robust simulation functions with disturbance refinement
B Wooding, A Lavaei, V Vahidinasab, S Soudjani 2023 European Control Conference (ECC), 1-6, 2023 |
9 | 2023 |
|
Model-based and data-driven formal synthesis of power systems
BJ Wooding Newcastle University, 2023 |
1 | 2023 |
|
Arch-comp21 category report: Stochastic models
A Abate, H Blom, M Bouissou, N Cauchi, H Chraibi, J Delicaris, ... 8th International Workshop on Applied Verification of Continuous and Hybrid …, 2021 |
39 | 2021 |
|
Tuning Robotti: the machine-assisted exploration of parameter spaces in multi-models of a cyber-physical system
S Bogomolov, J Fitzgerald, FF Foldager, C Gamble, PG Larsen, K Pierce, ... Proceedings of the 18th International Overture Workshop, 50-64, 2021 |
6 | 2021 |
|
Operation and control of a population of active buildings at network level
B Wooding, V Vahidinasab, S Soudjani Active Building Energy Systems: Operation and Control, 193-218, 2021 |
3 | 2021 |
|
Control and management of active buildings
B Wooding, V Vahidinasab, M Kazemi, S Soudjani Active Building Energy Systems: Operation and Control, 161-192, 2021 |
2 | 2021 |
|
Cyber-Physical Smart Homes/Buildings
B Wooding, V Vahidinasab, S Soudjani Springer, 2021 |
2021 | |
|
Formal controller synthesis for frequency regulation utilising electric vehicles
B Wooding, V Vahidinasab, S Soudjani 2020 International Conference on Smart Energy Systems and Technologies (SEST …, 2020 |
13 | 2020 |
|
Using formal methods and proof to verify a cando epilepsy medical device
B Wooding Master's thesis, School of Computing, Newcastle University, UK (June 2019), 2019 |
7 | 2019 |
Updated daily from Google Scholar. See Publications for the full list.