Calendar
Calendar
Posted September 5, 2025
Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?
10:30 am – 11:20 am Zoom (click here to join)
Naira Hovakimyan, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Fellow of AIAA, ASME, IEEE, and IFAC
Safe Learning in Autonomous Systems
Learning-based control paradigms have seen many success stories with autonomous systems and robots in recent years. However, as these robots prepare to enter the real world, operating safely in the presence of imperfect model knowledge and external disturbances is going to be vital to ensure mission success. We introduce a class of distributionally robust adaptive control architectures that ensure robustness to distribution shifts and enable the development of certificates for validation and verification of learning-enabled systems. An overview of different projects at our lab that build upon this framework will be demonstrated to show different applications.
Posted October 7, 2025
Last modified October 9, 2025
Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?
9:30 am – 10:20 am Note: First of 2 Seminars for 10/31. Zoom (click here to join)
Alexandre Mauroy, Université de Namur
Dual Koopman Operator Formulation in Reproducing Kernel Hilbert Spaces for State Estimation
The Koopman operator acts on observable functions defined over the state space of a dynamical system, thereby providing a linear global description of the system dynamics. A pointwise description of the system is recovered through a weak formulation, i.e. via the pointwise evaluation of observables at specific states. In this context, the use of reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHS) is of interest since the above evaluation can be represented as the duality pairing between the observables and bounded evaluation functionals. This representation emphasizes the relevance of a dual formulation for the Koopman operator, where a dual Koopman system governs the evolution of linear evaluation functionals. In this talk, we will leverage the dual formulation to build a Luenberger observer that estimates the (infinite-dimensional) state of the Koopman dual system, and equivalently the (finite-dimensional) state of the nonlinear dynamics. The method will be complemented with theoretical convergence results that support numerical Koopman operator-based estimation techniques known from the literature. Finally, we will extend the framework to a probabilistic approach by solving the problem of moments in the RKHS setting.
Posted October 8, 2025
Last modified October 9, 2025
Control and Optimization Seminar Questions or comments?
10:30 am – 11:20 am Note: Second of 2 Seminars for 10/31. Zoom (click here to join)
Umesh Vaidya, Clemson University
TBA
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.
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
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
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
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