About
Brief Bio: Taylor T. Johnson, PhD, PE (TN), is A. James and Alice B. Clark Foundation Chancellor Faculty Fellow, Associate Chair of Computer Science, Director of Graduate Studies (CS PhD), and Associate Professor of Computer Science (CS) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) in the School of Engineering (VUSE) at Vanderbilt University (since August 2021, Assistant Professor 2016-2021), where he directs the Verification and Validation for Intelligent and Trustworthy Autonomy Laboratory (VeriVITAL) and is a Senior Research Scientist in the Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) and a Faculty Affiliate of the Data Science Institute (DSI).
Taylor was previously an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of Texas at Arlington (September 2013 to August 2016). Taylor earned a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013, where he worked in the Coordinated Science Laboratory with Prof. Sayan Mitra, and earlier earned an MSc in ECE at Illinois in 2010 and a BSEE from Rice University in 2008.
Taylor's research focus is developing formal verification techniques and software tools for cyber-physical systems (CPS), with a focus most recently on autonomous CPS that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) components, such as neural networks, for tasks ranging from sensing/perception through planning/control. Taylor has published around a hundred papers on these methods and their applications across CPS domains, such as power and energy systems, aerospace and avionics systems, automotive systems, transportation systems, and robotics, three of which were recognized with best/outstanding paper awards, from the IEEE and IFIP, and two of which were awarded Best Software Repeatability/Artifact Awards.
Taylor received the AFOSR Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP) award to visit the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)'s Information Directorate in 2015, was a Visiting Faculty Research Program (VFRP) award fellow at AFRL's Information Directorate in 2014, and was a visiting graduate research assistant through an SFFP award at AFRL's Space Vehicles Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base in 2011.
Taylor is a 2018 and 2016 recipient of the AFOSR Young Investigator Program (YIP) award, a 2015 recipient of the NSF Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Initiation Initiative (CRII), and his research is / has been supported by AFRL, AFOSR, ARO, DARPA, NSA, NSF, NVIDIA, ONR, Toyota, and USDOT.
Physical Location (Lab):
VeriVITAL - The Verification and Validation for Intelligent and Trustworthy Autonomy Laboratory
Room 300
1025 16th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37212
Institute for Software Integrated Systems
Department of Computer Science (EECS)
School of Engineering (VUSE)
Vanderbilt University
Physical Location (Prof. Johnson):
Taylor T. Johnson
A. James and Alice B. Clark Foundation Chancellor Faculty Fellow, Associate Professor of Computer Science (CS) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Associate Chair (CS), and Director of Graduate Studies (CS PhD)
Room 401D
1025 16th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37212
Institute for Software Integrated Systems
Department of Computer Science (Primary);
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE);
Data Science Institute (DSI)
School of Engineering (VUSE)
Vanderbilt University
Research
VeriVital People: Collaborators and Students
Research Interests
- Cyber-physical systems: real-time, networked embedded control systems and software
- Software engineering, formal methods, and formal verification
- Safe autonomy: from sensing and perception through planning and control, encompassing computer vision reliability and neural network control systems (NNCS)
- Safe and trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI): robust machine learning (ML), adversarial machine learning, symbolic (e.g., automata) learning, requirements and specifications in AI/ML (robustness, safety, security, etc.)
- Hybrid systems and switched systems: hybrid automata, dynamics models (ODEs, DAEs, PDEs, etc.), reachability
- Reliability and fault-tolerance
- Application domains including transportation systems (aerospace and automotive), robotics, power and energy systems
Curriculum Vitae (CV) / Resume [pdf]
Research Support
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our ongoing/past research by AFOSR, AFRL, ARO, DARPA, Mathworks, NSA, NSF, NVIDIA, ONR, Toyota Technical Center, and USDOT. More details on the projects are available in my CV.
Active & Ongoing Research Projects
- "Improving Malware Classifiers with Plausible Novel Samples, NSA, Role: Co-PI with PI Kevin Leach, 2023-2026
- "Assured Neuro Symbolic Components and Systems (ANSCS)", DARPA ANSR, 2023-2027, Award Number: FA8750-23-C-0518
- "Verification of Autonomous Systems through Hyperproperties and Machine Learning", AFOSR, 2023-2024, Award Number: FA9550-23-1-0135
- "NSF Workshop on Safety and Trust in Artificial Intelligence Enabled Systems," NSF CISE CCF, 2022-2023, Award Number: 2231543, Role: PI, with Jerry Zhu, Kate Saenko, and Pavithra Prabhakar
- "FMitF: Track I: Generative Neural Network Verification in Medical Imaging Analysis," NSF CISE CCF/FMitF, 2022-2025, Award Number: 2220401, Role: PI, with Co-PI Ipek Oguz and Meiyi Ma
- "Collaborative Research: FMitF: Track II: Enhancing the Neural Network Verification (NNV) Tool for Industrial Applications," NSF CISE CCF/FMitF, 2022-2024, Award Number (Vanderbilt): 2220426, Award Number (UNL): 2220418, Role: PI, with PI Hoang-Dung Tran
- "Verification of Autonomous Systems: Hyperproperties in Machine Learning," AFOSR and Innovare Trusted AI at Scale Challenge Series Awardee, Award Number: FA9550-22-1-0019, Role: PI, 2021-2023
- "Collaborative Research: Operator theoretic methods for identification and verification of dynamical systems," NSF ENG ECCS, 2020-2023, Award Number (Vanderbilt): 2028001, Role: PI, with PIs Joel Rosenfeld and Rushikesh Kamalapurkar
- "SHF: Small: Collaborative Research: Fuzzing Cyber-Physical System Development Tool Chains with Deep Learning (DeepFuzz-CPS)," NSF CISE CCF/SHF, 2019-2022, Award Number (Vanderbilt): 1910017, Award Number (UT-Arlington): 1911017, Role: PI, with PI Christoph Csallner
- "FMitF: Track II: Hybrid and Dynamical Systems Verification on the CPS-VO," NSF CISE CCF/FMitF, 2019-2021, Award Number (Vanderbilt): 1918450, Role: PI
- "Assurance-Based Learning-Enabled Cyber-Physical Systems (ALC)," Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Assured Autonomy (AA), 2018-2023, Award Number: FA8750-18-C-0089, Role: Co-PI, with Gabor Karsai (PI), Xenofon Koutsoukos (Co-PI), Ted Bapty (Co-PI), Janos Sztipanovits; Project Website
- "Cyber-Physical Systems Science of Security Lablet," Department of Defense (DoD) / National Security Agency (NSA), 2018-2023, Role: Co-PI, with Xenofon Koutsoukos (PI) and many collaborators at Vanderbilt, Berkeley, MIT, and UT Dallas
Past & Completed Research Projects
- "Scalable Formal Verification of Resilient Converter-dominated MVDC Networks," Office of Naval Research (ONR), Code 33 - Sea and Warfare Weapons, 2018-2021, Award Number: N00014-18-1-2184, Role: Co-PI, with Ali Davoudi (PI)
- "Understandable and Reusable Formal Verification for Cyber-Physical Systems," Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Young Investigator Program (YIP), 2018-2021, Award Number: FA9550-18-1-0122, Role: Sole PI
- "SHF: Small: Automating Improvement of Development Environments for Cyber-Physical Systems (AIDE-CPS)," NSF CISE CCF/SHF, 2015-2018, Award Number (Vanderbilt): 1736323, Previous Award Number (UT-Arlington): 1527398, Role: PI, with Co-PI Christoph Csallner
- "Cyber-Physical Systems Specification Mismatch and Safe Upgrades," Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), 2015-2018, Award Number: FA9550-15-1-0258, Role: Sole PI
- "Reusable Formal Verification for Cyber-Physical Systems," Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Young Investigator Program (YIP), 2016-2017, Award Number: FA9550-16-1-0246, Role: Sole PI
- "Safely and Securely Controlling Large Swarms of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) with the STAbilizing Robot Language (StarL)," Wright Brothers Institute (WBI) Summer of Innovation, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB), Aerospace Systems Directorate (AFRL/RQ), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), May 2017 to August 2017, Award Number: FA8650-12-3-7255, Role: Sole PI
- "Testbed Acquisition for Resilient Self-Organizing Microgrids," Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP), Office of Naval Research (ONR), September 2016 to September 2017, Award Number: N00014-16-1-3180, Role: Co-PI, with PI Ali Davoudi
- "Realizing Resilient Self-Organizing Microgrids," Department of Defense (DoD) Research and Education Program for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU/MI), Army Research Office (ARO), September 2016 to September 2017, Award Number: W911NF-16-1-0534, Role: Co-PI, with PI Ali Davoudi
- "Formal Modeling of Emergence in Distributed Cyber-Physical Systems," Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Trusted Autonomy and Verification and Validation (V&V), Integrated Command and Control, BAA-10-01-RIKA, 2015-2017, Award Number: FA8750-15-1-0105, Role: Sole PI
- "App-Based Crowd Sourcing of Bicycle and Pedestrian Conflict Data," University Transportation Center for Livable Communities (TRCLC), US Department of Transportation (USDOT), 2015-2016, Role: Co-PI
- "Real-time Ab Initio Modeling of Electric Machines," NSF ENG ECCS/EPCN, 2015-2018, Award Number: 1509804, Role: Co-PI, with PI Ali Davoudi
- "CRII: CPS: Safe Cyber-Physical Systems Upgrades," NSF CISE CNS/CPS, 2015-2018, Award Number (Vanderbilt): 1713253, Previous Award Number (UT-Arlington): 1464311, Role: Sole PI
Publications
Teaching
Vanderbilt University
Fall 2021 (online), Spring 2020 (online), Spring 2018
Fall 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Fall 2021, Fall 2020, Fall 2019, Fall 2018, Fall 2017
Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023 (in person and online sections), Spring 2022 (in person and online sections), Spring 2021, Spring 2019, Spring 2017
2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017
Fall 2019
Fall 2017
University of Texas at Arlington
University of Connecticut, United Technologies Corporation (UTC) Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering (IASE)
Summer 2015; adjunct faculty, main instructor
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Spring 2010, Spring 2009; teaching assistant
Fall 2008; teaching assistant
Service
Editorial Boards
- Associate Editor, Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT)
Competition Organization
- Co-founder and organizer, Verification of Neural Networks Competition (VNN-COMP)
- Co-founder and organizer, International Competition on Verifying Continuous and Hybrid Systems (ARCH-COMP) category on Artificial Intelligence and Neural Network Control Systems (AINNCS)
Program Committees and Organizational Roles
Taylor has served on program committees and in different organizational roles for the following venues:
- AAAI - Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
- CAV - International Conference on Computer Aided Verification
- CVPR - IEEE/CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference
- EMSOFT - International Conference on Embedded Software
- FORMATS - International Conference on Formal Modeling and Analysis of Timed Systems
- HSCC - International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control
- ICCV - IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision
- NFM - NASA Formal Methods Symposium
- SAIV - Safe AI for Vehicles
- SPIN - International Symposium on Model Checking of Software
- RTSS - IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium
- UAI - Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence
- And many others
People
VeriVITAL Group Photos
Principal Investigator
Taylor T. Johnson
Research Interests: Cyber-physical systems, formal methods, hybrid systems, safe AI, trustworthy AI
Contact Information
Current Group Members
Postdoctoral Research Associates and Research Scientists
- Navid Hashemi, started postdoc spring 2025
- Diego Manzanas Lopez, started postdoc fall 2022
- Tianshu Bao, Vanderbilt EECS; MSc, Applied Mathematics, SUNY Stony Brook, 2016; PhD 2017-2023; started postdoc fall 2023
PhD Students
- Anne Tumlin, joined group fall 2023 (co-advised with Tyler Derr); 2024 DOE CSGF
- Thuy Dung (Judy) Nguyen, joined group fall 2023 (co-advised with Kevin Leach)
- Samuel Sasaki, joined group summer 2023
- Preston Robinette, Vanderbilt EECS; joined group fall 2020; 2021 NDSEG Fellow
- Serena Serbinowksa, Vanderbilt EECS; joined group summer 2019
Past Group Members and Alumni
Postdoctoral Research Associate Alumni
- Joel Rosenfeld, 2017-2019, Vanderbilt EECS, PhD University of Florida; next position: Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at University of South Florida
- Weiming Xiang, 2015-2019, Vanderbilt EECS, PhD, Southwest Jiaotong University; next position: Associate Professor at Augusta University
- Andrew Sogokon, Vanderbilt EECS, PhD University of Edinburgh; next position: postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University
- Khaza Anuarul Hoque, UTA CSE; PhD, Concordia University, Canada; current position: Assistant Professor at University of Missouri
PhD Alumni
- Neelanjana Pal, Vanderbilt EECS; joined group summer 2019 to spring 2024
- Tianshu Bao, Vanderbilt EECS; MSc, Applied Mathematics, SUNY Stony Brook, 2016; started fall 2017
- Diego Manzanas Lopez, Vanderbilt EECS; BSc Physics, Presbyterian College, 2017; started fall 2017
- Nathaniel (Nate) Hamilton, Vanderbilt EECS; BS Computer Science, Lipscomb University, 2017; started summer 2017; 2019 NDSEG Fellow
- Xiaodong Yang, Vanderbilt EECS; MSc, Mechanical Engineering, 2016; started fall 2017
- Patrick Musau, Vanderbilt EECS; BSc Physics and Applied Mathematics, Furman University, 2017; started fall 2017
- Hoang-Dung Tran, Vanderbilt EECS; 2015-2020; next position: Assistant Professor at University of Nebraska Lincoln
- Shafiul Chowdhury, UTA CSE; BSc Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), started fall 2015; next position: Research Scientist at Facebook
- Luan Viet Nguyen, UTA CSE; spring 2014 to spring 2018; current position: Assistant Professor at University of Dayton
- Omar Ali Beg, UTA EE; started summer 2014, graduated summer 2017; current position: Assistant Professor at University of Texas Permian Basin
MSc Thesis Alumni
- Ayana Wild, Vanderbilt EECS; BS Computer Science and Mathematics, Tennessee State University; started summer 2017
- Ulysses Yu, MSc Thesis, Combining Reachable Set Computation with Neuron Coverage
- Rahul Kawadgave, MSc Thesis, "Smartphone-Based Crowd Sourcing of Bicycle and Pedestrian Conflict Data for Transportation Safety Assessment", August 2016, UTA EE
- Randy Long, MSc Thesis, "Time-Triggered Controller Area Network Design for Formula SAE Racecars and Technique for Measuring CPU Usage on Systems with Nested and Non-Nested Interrupts", August 2016, UTA EE
- Nathan Hervey, MSc Thesis, Localization and Control of Distributed Mobile Robots with the Microsoft Kinect and StarL, May 2016, UTA CSE
- Shweta Hardas, MSc Thesis, "Virtual And Hardware Prototyping Of A Modular Multilevel Inverter For Photovoltaics", May 2015, UTA EE
- Ruoshi Zhang, MSc Thesis, "Model-based Design And Analysis Of Automotive Systems Using Time-triggered Controller Area Networks", May 2015, UTA EE
- Amol Vengurlekar, MSc Thesis, "Design Of A Real Time Reconfigurable Bioreactor", May 2015, UTA EE
Undergraduate Student Alumni
- Timothy Liang, BSc Project, Vanderbilt EECS
- Stirling Carter, BSc Project, Vanderbilt EECS
- Austin Wilms, BSc Project, Vanderbilt EECS
- Yinghui Yang, BSc Project, Vanderbilt EECS
- Anissa Alexander, BSc Project, Vanderbilt EECS
- Christina Wang, BSc Project, Vanderbilt EECS
- Daniel Hong, BSc Project, Johns Hopkins University Mechanical Engineering
- Eric Nelson, BSc Project, UTA, Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), 2013-2014
Prospective Students: I am looking for ambitious and motivated graduate and undergraduate students. Research Assistantships (RAs) are available for competitive candidates. If you are a Vanderbilt student looking for an advisor, or if you are interested in applying to Vanderbilt for graduate studies in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or Computer Engineering, please email me with your resume/CV if you are interested to do research in formal methods, hybrid systems, embedded systems / cyber-physical systems, software engineering, distributed systems, and related areas. If you do not include your resume/CV, I will definitely not respond. As I receive many such requests, I cannot reply to every email, but do my best to reply to competitive applicants.
Current/Recent Collaborators
Contact Information
VeriVital People: Collaborators and Students
My school office and lab addresses are as follows:
Physical Location (Lab):
VeriVITAL - The Verification and Validation for Intelligent and Trustworthy Autonomy Laboratory
Room 300
1025 16th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37212
Institute for Software Integrated Systems
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS)
School of Engineering (VUSE)
Vanderbilt University
Physical Location (Prof. Johnson):
Taylor T. Johnson
A. James and Alice B. Clark Foundation Chancellor Faculty Fellow, Associate Professor of Computer Science (CS) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Associate Chair (CS), and Director of Graduate Studies (CS PhD)
Room 401D
1025 16th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37212
Institute for Software Integrated Systems
Department of Computer Science (Primary);
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE);
Data Science Institute (DSI)
School of Engineering (VUSE)
Vanderbilt University
Email: taylor.johnson@gmail.com
Email (School): taylor.johnson@vanderbilt.edu
Spam/Email Notice: I am receiving a large volume of email these days, and please be aware that my spam filters are set to very high sensitivity given the volume of mail received.
If you do not hear back from me in a reasonable timeframe, please resend your message, or if it is urgent, please call.
Phone (Office): 615-875-9057
Fax: 615-343-7440
Mailing Address:
Taylor T. Johnson
VUSE-ISIS Building
1025 16th Ave S, Suite 102
Nashville, TN 37212
Campus Mail Address (Not for Postal Mail):
Taylor T. Johnson
PMB351829
Nashville, TN 37235