Calendar

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Friday, August 29, 2025

Posted August 23, 2025

Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?

10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)

Alex Olshevsky, Boston University AFOSR YIP and NSF CAREER Awardee
TBA

Friday, September 5, 2025

Posted August 11, 2025

Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?

10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)

Gabriela Gonzalez, Louisiana State University Member, US National Academy of Sciences
TBA

Friday, October 3, 2025

Posted August 14, 2025

Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?

10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)

Xin Zhang, New York University
TBA

Friday, October 10, 2025

Posted August 1, 2025

Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?

10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)

Felix Schwenninger, University of Twente, The Netherlands
TBA

Friday, November 7, 2025

Posted July 26, 2025

Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?

10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)

Rami Katz, Università degli Studi di Trento, Italy
Oscillations in Strongly 2-Cooperative Systems and their Applications in Systems Biology

The emergence of sustained oscillations (via convergence to periodic orbits) in high-dimensional nonlinear dynamical systems is a non-trivial question with important applications in control of biological systems, including the design of synthetic bio-molecular oscillators and the understanding of circadian rhythms governing hormone secretion, body temperature and metabolic functions. In systems biology, the mechanism underlying such widespread oscillatory biological motifs is still not fully understood. From a mathematical perspective, the study of sustained oscillations is comprised of two parts: (i) showing that at least one periodic orbit exists and (ii) studying the stability of periodic orbits and/or characterizing the initial conditions which yield solutions that converge to periodic trajectories. In this talk, we focus on a specific class of nonlinear dynamical systems that are strongly 2-cooperative. Using the theory of cones of rank k, the spectral theory of totally positive matrices and Perron-Frobenius theory, we will show that strongly 2-cooperative systems admit an explicit set of initial conditions of positive measure, such that every solution emanating from this set converges to a periodic orbit. We further demonstrate our results using the n-dimensional Goodwin oscillator and a 4-dimensional biological oscillator based on RNA–mediated regulation.

Friday, November 14, 2025

Posted August 1, 2025

Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?

10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)

Thinh Doan, University of Texas at Austin AFOSR YIP and NSF CAREER Awardee
TBA

Friday, November 21, 2025

Posted July 13, 2025
Last modified July 18, 2025

Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?

10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)

Dimitra Panagou, University of Michigan AFOSR YIP, NASA Early Career Faculty, and NSF CAREER Awardee
TBA

Friday, December 5, 2025

Posted July 22, 2025

Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?

10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)

Javad Velni, Clemson University
TBA

Friday, December 12, 2025

Posted August 18, 2025

Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?

10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)

Zequn Zheng, Louisiana State University
TBA