AI & ML Paradigm Shift

SINDy-KANs combine Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks with Sparse Identification of Non-linear Dynamics to create parsimonious, interpretable models.

March 20, 2026

Original Paper

SINDy-KANs: Sparse identification of non-linear dynamics through Kolmogorov-Arnold networks

Amanda A. Howard, Nicholas Zolman, Bruno Jacob, Steven L. Brunton, Panos Stinis

arXiv · 2603.18548

The Takeaway

While KANs were proposed for interpretability, they often lack sparsity; this work applies symbolic regression techniques at the activation level to discover actual sparse equations. This is a significant step toward making deep learning models truly transparent for scientific discovery.

From the abstract

Kolmogorov-Arnold networks (KANs) have arisen as a potential way to enhance the interpretability of machine learning. However, solutions learned by KANs are not necessarily interpretable, in the sense of being sparse or parsimonious. Sparse identification of nonlinear dynamics (SINDy) is a complementary approach that allows for learning sparse equations for dynamical systems from data; however, learned equations are limited by the library. In this work, we present SINDy-KANs, which simultaneousl