A 5-day Boot Camp on

Reinforcement Learning Unleashed: Hands-On Skill Building for Smarter AI

Bridging AI and sustainability through smart decision-making agents.

Date

18 August – 22 August 2025

Session 1 Time (Lecture)

10:00am to 12:00pm

Session 2 Time (Lab/Hands on):

2:00pm to 4:00pm

Venue

Smart Classroom, SEECS, NUST

About The Workshop

This immersive 5-day workshop offers a comprehensive and hands-on introduction to reinforcement learning (RL), designed to bridge the gap between theoretical foundations and real-world applications — including those critical to building a more sustainable future. Ideal for students, educators, and professionals, this workshop emphasizes experiential learning through clear conceptual explanations, coding exercises, and project-based tasks.

Participants will explore key RL concepts such as Markov Decision Processes, policy optimization, and deep RL, while applying them to impactful domains like energy optimization, smart transportation, resource-efficient robotics, and climate-aware decision systems. The course incorporates interactive notebooks and algorithm implementations in Python using frameworks such as Gymnasium, PyTorch, and Stable-Baselines3. Beyond just learning, participants will engage with open-ended projects that reflect sustainability challenges and explore how intelligent agents can support responsible, long-term decision-making. The workshop encourages reproducible research and real-world innovation aligned with global sustainability goals.

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Workshop

Learning Outcomes

Grasp the theoretical foundations of RL and understand how they can be applied to sustainability challenges in energy systems, environment monitoring, and autonomous systems.

Gain fluency in implementing RL algorithms from scratch and through modern toolkits with a focus on resource-aware optimization and decision-making.

Design and evaluate RL agents in simulated and real-world settings that model sustainable development scenarios (e.g., energy usage minimization, green logistics).

Explore how RL is enabling next-generation intelligent systems to align with environmental and societal objectives — preparing for research or careers in AI, robotics, and sustainable technologies.

Who Should Attend

1

Students and Scholars

Especially those in AI, robotics, data science, or environmental technology who are keen to apply RL to real-world sustainability problems.

2

Educators and Researchers

Seeking to integrate RL and sustainability into teaching, curriculum design, or cross-disciplinary research in AI for social good.

3

Industry Professionals and Engineers

Working in sectors like clean energy, mobility, agriculture, smart manufacturing, or urban planning, where intelligent systems can drive efficiency and sustainability.

4

Sustainability-Driven Innovators and AI Enthusiasts

With a passion for using RL to address climate change, optimize resource use, and develop intelligent systems for long-term impact.

5

Data Scientists and Machine Learning Practitioners

Looking to extend their skillset into RL while solving complex, dynamic problems with sustainability outcomes in mind.

6

Project Developers

Interested in competing in or designing sustainability-themed RL challenges (e.g., smart grid simulation, waste management automation).

Detailed Activities / Topic Plan

Day 1

18th August
Planning Using Markov Decision Processes
- Iterative Policy Evaluation
- Policy Iteration
- Value Iteration

Day 2

19th August
Tabular Reinforcement Learning

- Montel Carlo Prediction and Control
- Temporal Difference Learning
- SARSA Algorithm for Control

Day 3

20th August

Value Function Approximation

- Incremental VFA Methods
- Deep Q Networks
- Double Deep Q Networks

Day 4

21st August

Policy Gradient Methods

- Advantage Actor Critic (A2C)
- Deterministic Policy Gradient (DPG)
- Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (DDPG)
- Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO)

Day 5

22nd August

Reinforcement Learning Project

- Atari Game Solving
- MuJoCo Environments

Resource person

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Dr. Zuhair Zafar

Assistant Professor (SEECS, NUST)
Doctor of Engineering (Robotics)
TU Kaiserslautern, Germany

Organizers

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Prof Dr. Muhammad Moazam Fraz

Director ICESCO Chair,
Professor and HoD ( AI & Data Science Department)
SEECS, NUST

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Dr. Zuhair Zafar

Assistant Professor (SEECS, NUST)
Doctor of Engineering (Robotics)
TU Kaiserslautern, Germany

Collaborators

Registration:

Registration Fee: PKR 10,000 (8000 Pkr for SEECS students only)

Last Date to Register : 15th Aug 2025

Registration Link:

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