Meel Group

University of Toronto
Georgia Institute of Technology

Welcome to the Meel Group’s web page. Our group is based at the University of Toronto and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Led by Kuldeep S. Meel, we develop scalable automated reasoning techniques that bridge theory and practice. Our research draws on randomized algorithms, statistical inference, formal methods, and distribution testing.

Interests

  • Formal Methods
  • Databases
  • Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
  • Constrained Sampling and Counting

Research

Our primary research interest is in automated reasoning. The long term vision of our research program is to advance automated reasoning techniques to enable computing to deal with increasingly uncertain real-world environments. The core theme of our research program is the quest for scalability. Accordingly, our work straddles theory and practice, and draws upon ideas from randomized algorithms, statistical inference, formal methods, distribution testing, and software engineering.

Our research spans multiple areas of computer science, as reflected in our publication record through 2026: artificial intelligence and machine learning (AAAI: 27×, IJCAI: 14×, NeurIPS: 6×, KR: 4×, AISTATS: 3×, ICML: 1×, ICLR: 1×), formal methods and constraint solving (CAV: 12×, SAT: 10×, CP: 9×, LPAR: 4×, TACAS: 3×), databases (PODS: 6×, ICDT: 2×), design automation (DAC: 3×, DATE: 3×, ICCAD: 2×), and theoretical computer science (LICS: 2×, SODA: 1×, ICALP: 1×, ESA: 1×). These connections allow us to bring advances in algorithms and reasoning systems to problems across disciplines.

Publications

Quickly discover relevant content by filtering publications.
(2026). #CFG and #DNNF admit FPRAS. In Proceedings of the Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA), pp. 5978–6010.

DOI

(2026). Counting and Sampling Traces in Regular Languages. Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages, 10(POPL), pp. 2352–2379.

DOI

(2026). CSB: A Counting and Sampling tool for Bit-vectors. Acta Informatica, 63(3), article 23.

DOI

(2026). On approximability of propositional model counting. Theoretical Computer Science, 1075, article 115930.

DOI

(2026). On the smallest antichain that generates an ideal of a given size. Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A, 222, article 106182.

DOI

News

Our 2026 publications include four journal articles and four conference papers on counting, sampling, synthesis, and verification.

Journal articles

Conference papers

Two of our papers were accepted to LPAR-26, held in Spetses, Greece, on October 25–30, 2026:

  • Scaling Zero Knowledge UNSAT Verification via Normalized Chaining — Ashwin Karthikeyan, Ethan Kharitonov, Kuldeep S. Meel, and Anwar Hithnawi. The work improves the scalability of zero-knowledge UNSAT certification by normalizing resolution proofs to reduce prover memory requirements.
  • Formally Solving Answer-Construction Problems in Lean — Jialiang Sun, Yuzhi Tang, Ao Li, Chris Maddison, and Kuldeep Meel. The work introduces Enumerate-Conjecture-Prove, combining answer construction with machine-checked proofs and admissibility checks in Lean.

See the official accepted-paper list and abstracts.

Our paper “Quantifying Sensitivity for Tree Ensembles: A Symbolic and Compositional Approach” (with Ajinkya Naik, Chaitanya Garg, S. Akshay, and Ashutosh Gupta) is accepted to CAV-26.

Our KR-25 paper received the Marco Cadoli Best Student Paper Award. Congratulations to our students, Arijit Shaw and Uddalok Sarkar.

Our paper “Provable Guarantees in Approximate Synthesis” (with Kushagra Gupta, Priyanka Golia, and Subhajit Roy) is accepted to DATE-26.

Our paper “The Limitations and Power of NP-Oracle-Based Functional Synthesis Techniques” (with Brendan Juba) is accepted to AAAI-26.

Our paper “Solution-Aware Vs Global ReLU Selection: Partial MILP Strikes Back for DNN Verification” (with Yuke Liao, Blaise Genest, and Shaan Aryaman) is accepted to ATVA 2025.

Our paper “Counting and Sampling Traces in Regular Languages” (with Alexis de Colnet and Umang Mathur) is accepted to POPL 2026.

Software


NameInputTypeProject WebpageNote
ArjunCNFPreprocessorSourceMinimal independent set calculator and CNF minimizer
ApproxMCCNFApproximate CounterSourceSupports projected model counting
ExactMCCNFExact CounterSourceSupports weighted model counting
GANAKCNFExact CounterSourceSupports projected model counting
PBCountPseudo-Boolean FormulaExact CounterSourceSupports weighted model counting
ApproxMC-PBPseudo-Boolean FormulaApproximate CounterSourceSupports projected model counting
sharpASPAnswer set programExact CounterSourceExact count of the number of answer sets
ApproxASPAnswer set programApproximate counterSourceapproximately counts the number of answer sets
pepinDNFApproximate CounterSourceSupports weighted model counting
CraneFirst Order FormulaExact CounterSourceSupports weighted model counting
CSBSMT (bit vector)Approximate Counter and SamplerSourceApproximate counting, almost uniform and uniform-like smapling
SkolemFCQBFApproximate CounterSourceCounts number of Skolem functions
AMUSICCNFApproximate MUS CounterSourceCounts minimal unsatisfiable subsets of CNF
Weighted-to-unweightedWeighted CNFUtilitySourceConverts weighted CNF to unweighted CNF
UniGenCNFAlmost Uniform samplerSourceSupports Projected Sampling
CMSGenCNFUniform-like samplerSourceSupports Projected Sampling
WAPSCNFExact Uniform samplerSourceSupports weighted and Projected Sampling
INCCNFIncremental uniform samplerSourceSupports weighted Sampling
ManthanQBFSkolem Function SynthesizerSourceSynthesize Skolem function given a specification
BarbarikCNF SamplerSampler TesterSourceSupports weighted sampler testing
TeqNNFProbabilistic Circuit Closeness TesterSourceTests whether two Probabilistic Circuits (in NNF) are close
CubeprobeCNF SamplerSampler TesterSourceSelf reducible sampler tester

Meet the Team

Faculty

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Kuldeep S. Meel

Stephen Fleming Early Career Associate Professor

Georgia Institute of Technology

University of Toronto (on leave)

Senior Research Fellows

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Mate Soos

Senior Research Fellow

PhD Students

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Arijit Shaw

PhD student · Fall 2021–present

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Ashwin Karthikeyan

PhD student · Fall 2025–present

Co-advised with Anwar Hithnawi

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Jiong Yang

PhD student · Fall 2021–present

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Uddalok Sarkar

PhD student · Fall 2023–present

Co-advised with Sourav Chakraborty

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Jack Sun

PhD student · Fall 2023–present

Xinyi Le

PhD student · Fall 2026–present

Alumni - Postdoc graduates

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Lawqueen Kanesh

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Paulius Dilkas

Postdoc · December 2022–May 2025

Next position: Middle East Technical University Northern Cyprus Campus

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Gunjan Kumar

Postdoc · March 2021–July 2024

Next position: Assistant Professor, IIT Kanpur

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Timothy van Bremen

Postdoc · June 2022–June 2024

Next position: Assistant Professor, Nanyang Technological University

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Yong Lai

Next position: Associate Professor, Jilin University

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Anna Latour

Postdoc · February 2022–April 2024

Next position: Assistant Professor, Delft University of Technology

Alumni - PhD graduates

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Priyanka Golia

PhD 2023

Next position: CISPA, then Assistant Professor at IIT Delhi

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Suwei Yang

PhD 2025

Next position: Software Engineer, GrabTaxi Holdings, Singapore

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Yash Pote

PhD 2025

Next position: Postdoc, National University of Singapore

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Bishwamittra Ghosh

PhD 2023

Next position: Postdoc, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems

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Teodora Baluta

PhD 2024

Next position: Assistant Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology

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Md Mohimenul Kabir

PhD 2026

Next position: Postdoc, Monash University, Australia

Alumni - Research Interns

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Ananth Krishna Kidambi

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Guramrit Singh

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Biswadeep

Alumni - Masters Graduates

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Alexis de Colnet

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Rémi Delannoy

Past Visitors

2023

Dror Fried

Open University of Israel

S Akshay

IIT Bombay

2019

Pavan Aduri

Iowa State

Roland Jie-Hong

National Taiwan University

2018

Vijay Ganesh

Waterloo

Openings

Our group is based at the University of Toronto and the Georgia Institute of Technology. We work at the intersection of algorithm design and systems, with an emphasis on scalable automated reasoning. We welcome applicants with a strong background in algorithms, statistics, or formal methods and experience building research software.

PhD positions

Kuldeep plans to recruit 1–2 PhD students for Fall 2027. Please mention his name in your application and follow the application procedure of the institution you are applying to:

Current students

If you are a student at the University of Toronto or Georgia Tech and would like to discuss research opportunities, email Kuldeep to arrange a meeting.