TILOS is a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Institute for Learning-enabled Optimization at Scale, funded by NSF with additional support from Intel Corporation. Our mission is to become the nexus of learning, optimization, and the leading edge of practice for three high-stage areas: chips, networks, and robotics. A partnership of faculty from University of California, San Diego, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin, and Yale University, NSF TILOS use-domain research pioneers learning-enabled optimizations that transform chip design, robotics, communication networks, and other use domains that are vital to our nation’s health, prosperity and welfare. Our foundational research pursues five main pillars:

  1. Bridging discrete and continuous optimization.
  2. Distributed, parallel, and federated optimization.
  3. Optimization on manifolds.
  4. Dynamic decisions under uncertainty.
  5. Nonconvex optimization in deep learning.
A diagram representing the interconnectedness of the various components of the TILOS mission

FEATURED PRESENTATION
Big Data, Better Answers: Optimization at Scale with Courtney Paquette

FEATURED EVENTS & WORKSHOPS

Video Gallery

Congratulations to Yifei Shao, winner of the Best Conference Paper Award at ICRA 2026!

🎉 Shao’s paper “SymSkill: Symbol and Skill Co-Invention for Data-Efficient and Reactive Long-Horizon Manipulation” also Best Paper at the CoRL 2025 LEAP Workshop, and Best Paper on Planning and Control...

Brain Corp and UC San Diego partner to advance the foundational intelligence layer for physical AI

The research is being led in collaboration with TILOS Robotics team member Dr. Nikolay Atanasov, head of the Existential Robotics Laboratory at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering...

Brain Corp partners with UC San Diego to help robots operate in complex environments

“Simultaneous localization and mapping, or SLAM, helped move robots beyond fixed industrial settings and into more dynamic environments,” said Dr. Nikolay Atanasov, TILOS Robotics team member and faculty member in...

STATEMENT OF VALUES

  • CROSS-DISCIPLINARY

    We are a community of cross-disciplinary scholarship, creativity and curiosity, and value the pursuit of knowledge, the advancement of technology, and professional development.

  • INTEGRITY

    We are a community of integrity and character that values what is honorable and honest in addressing real societal needs and grand challenges.

  • INCLUSIVITY

    We are an inclusive community that values the perspectives of and contributions from members of all groups.