PLASM-PHNov 12, 2025
The Data Fusion Labeler (dFL): Challenges and Solutions to Data Harmonization, Labeling, and Provenance in Fusion EnergyCraig Michoski, Matthew Waller, Brian Sammuli et al.
Fusion energy research increasingly depends on the ability to integrate heterogeneous, multimodal datasets from high-resolution diagnostics, control systems, and multiscale simulations. The sheer volume and complexity of these datasets demand the development of new tools capable of systematically harmonizing and extracting knowledge across diverse modalities. The Data Fusion Labeler (dFL) is introduced as a unified workflow instrument that performs uncertainty-aware data harmonization, schema-compliant data fusion, and provenance-rich manual and automated labeling at scale. By embedding alignment, normalization, and labeling within a reproducible, operator-order-aware framework, dFL reduces time-to-analysis by greater than 50X (e.g., enabling >200 shots/hour to be consistently labeled rather than a handful per day), enhances label (and subsequently training) quality, and enables cross-device comparability. Case studies from DIII-D demonstrate its application to automated ELM detection and confinement regime classification, illustrating its potential as a core component of data-driven discovery, model validation, and real-time control in future burning plasma devices.
LGNov 3, 2025
Uncertainty Guided Online Ensemble for Non-stationary Data Streams in Fusion ScienceKishansingh Rajput, Malachi Schram, Brian Sammuli et al.
Machine Learning (ML) is poised to play a pivotal role in the development and operation of next-generation fusion devices. Fusion data shows non-stationary behavior with distribution drifts, resulted by both experimental evolution and machine wear-and-tear. ML models assume stationary distribution and fail to maintain performance when encountered with such non-stationary data streams. Online learning techniques have been leveraged in other domains, however it has been largely unexplored for fusion applications. In this paper, we present an application of online learning to continuously adapt to drifting data stream for prediction of Toroidal Field (TF) coils deflection at the DIII-D fusion facility. The results demonstrate that online learning is critical to maintain ML model performance and reduces error by 80% compared to a static model. Moreover, traditional online learning can suffer from short-term performance degradation as ground truth is not available before making the predictions. As such, we propose an uncertainty guided online ensemble method to further improve the performance. The Deep Gaussian Process Approximation (DGPA) technique is leveraged for calibrated uncertainty estimation and the uncertainty values are then used to guide a meta-algorithm that produces predictions based on an ensemble of learners trained on different horizon of historical data. The DGPA also provides uncertainty estimation along with the predictions for decision makers. The online ensemble and the proposed uncertainty guided online ensemble reduces predictions error by about 6%, and 10% respectively over standard single model based online learning.
CVApr 24
Hard to See, Hard to Label: Generative and Symbolic Acquisition for Subtle Visual PhenomenaRenjith Prasad, Rishabh Sharma, Andrew E. Shao et al.
Subtle visual anomalies such as hairline cracks, sub-millimeter voids, and low-contrast inclusions are structurally atypical yet visually ambiguous, making them both difficult to annotate and easy to overlook during active learning. Standard acquisition heuristics based on discriminative uncertainty or feature diversity often overselect dominant patterns while underexploring sparse yet important regions of the data space. This failure mode is especially severe in industrial defect inspection, where anomalies may be both low-prevalence and difficult to distinguish from surrounding structure. To resolve this, we propose GSAL, an active learning framework for object detection that combines a diffusion-based difficulty signal with a hierarchical semantic coverage prior. The diffusion component scores images and proposals using reconstruction discrepancy and denoising variability, prioritizing visually atypical or ambiguous examples. However, diffusion alone does not prevent acquisition from repeatedly favoring hard samples within dominant semantic modes. The semantic component therefore organizes candidate samples in a three-level concept graph and promotes coverage of underrepresented semantic regions while providing interpretable acquisition rationales. By balancing visual difficulty with semantic coverage, GSAL improves retrieval of subtle and rare targets that are often missed by uncertainty-only selection. Experiments on a proprietary thin-film defect, Pascal VOC and MS COCO dataset show consistent gains in label efficiency and rare-class retrieval over uncertainty-, diversity-, and hybrid-based baselines
PLASM-PHSep 7, 2025
TGLF-SINN: Deep Learning Surrogate Model for Accelerating Turbulent Transport Modeling in FusionYadi Cao, Futian Zhang, Wesley Liu et al.
The Trapped Gyro-Landau Fluid (TGLF) model provides fast, accurate predictions of turbulent transport in tokamaks, but whole device simulations requiring thousands of evaluations remain computationally expensive. Neural network (NN) surrogates offer accelerated inference with fully differentiable approximations that enable gradient-based coupling but typically require large training datasets to capture transport flux variations across plasma conditions, creating significant training burden and limiting applicability to expensive gyrokinetic simulations. We propose \textbf{TGLF-SINN (Spectra-Informed Neural Network)} with three key innovations: (1) principled feature engineering that reduces target prediction range, simplifying the learning task; (2) physics-guided regularization of transport spectra to improve generalization under sparse data; and (3) Bayesian Active Learning (BAL) to strategically select training samples based on model uncertainty, reducing data requirements while maintaining accuracy. Our approach achieves superior performance with significantly less training data. In offline settings, TGLF-SINN reduces logarithmic root mean squared error (LRMSE) by 12. 4\% compared to the current baseline \base. Using only 25\% of the complete dataset with BAL, we achieve LRMSE only 0.0165 higher than \base~and 0.0248 higher than our offline model (0.0583). In downstream flux matching applications, our NN surrogate provides 45x speedup over TGLF while maintaining comparable accuracy, demonstrating potential for training efficient surrogates for higher-fidelity models where data acquisition is costly and sparse.