General Topics on April 28, 2025

Presenter: Zhongyi Wang and Tengjie Lin Abstract: Building upon the research theme presented on February 26, 2025, this report highlights recent advancements in our work. Specifically, we will present: (1) the updated workflow framework of Preguss with its underlying design rationale, (2) preliminary experimental results obtained from a small-scale dataset, and (3) current limitations and proposed directions for future improvements.

Presenter: Mingqi Yang Authors: Aleksandar Chakarov, University of Colorado; Sriram Sankaranarayanan, University of Colorado Abstract: We present techniques for the analysis of infinite state probabilistic programs to synthesize probabilistic invariants and prove almost-sure termina tion.

Presenter: Zhiyang Li Authors: Alessandro Abate, Mirco Giacobbe, Diptarko Roy Abstract: We introduce a general methodology for quantitative model checking and control synthesis with supermartingale certificates. We show that every specification that is invariant to time shifts admits a stochastic invariant that bounds its probability from below; for systems with general state space, the stochastic invariant bounds this probability as closely as desired; for systems with finite state space, it quantifies it exactly.

Presenter: Yiyang Zhou Abstract: Quantum key distribution (QKD) protocols are cryptographic techniques that provide an unconditionally secure key for communication parties. However, due to the limitations of hardware devices, practical QKD systems are vulnerable to photon number splitting (PNS) attacks.

Presenter: Yutao Sun Abstract: Humans possess the visual-spatial intelligence to remember spaces from sequential visual observations. However, can Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) trained on million-scale video datasets also “think in space” from videos?