Plenary Speakers

The organising committee is pleased to confirm the following Plenary Speakers for MSC2015.

Frank Allgöwer

University of Stuttgart, Germany

Frank Allgöwer is director of the Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control and full professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. Frank's main interests in research and teaching are in the area of systems and control with emphasis on the development of new methods for optimization-based control, networks of systems and systems biology. Frank received several recognitions for his work including the IFAC Outstanding Service Award, the State Teaching Award of the state of Baden-Württemberg, the Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and several best paper awards. At present Frank serves as IEEE CSS Vice-President for Technical Activities and is President-elect of the International Federation of Automatic Control. He is Editor for the journal Automatica and for the Springer Lecture Notes in Control and Information Science book series and serves as Associate Editor or on the editorial board of several further journals. Frank has been organizer or co-organizer of more than a dozen international conferences and has published over 300 scientific articles. Since 2012 Frank serves a Vice-President of the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Graham Goodwin

University of Newcastle, Australia

Graham Goodwin graduated from the University of New South Wales with B.Sc. (Physics) 1965, B.E. Honours I (Electrical Engineering) 1967 and Ph.D. 1971. In 2010 he was awarded the IEEE Control Systems Field Award and in 2013 he received the Rufus T. Oldenburger Medal from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Other international awards include the 1999 IEEE Control Systems Society Hendrik Bode Lecture Prize, a Best Paper award by IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, a Best Paper award by Asian Journal of Control, and two Best Engineering Text Book awards from the International Federation of Automatic Control in (1984 and 2005). He received the 2008 Quazza Medal from the International Federation of Automatic Control, the 2010 Nordic Process Control Award, and the 2011 Asian Control Association Wook Hyun Kwon Education Award. He is a Fellow of IEEE; an Honorary Fellow of Institute of Engineers, Australia; a Fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science; a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology, Science and Engineering; a Member of the International Statistical Institute; a Fellow of the Royal Society, London and a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He holds Honorary Doctorates from Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden and the Technion Israel. He is the co-author of nine books, four edited books, 218 international journal papers and 330 refereed international conference papers. He has successfully supervised 38 Ph.D. students. These hold senior positions in major international universities and industry. He has presented 60 Keynote Addresses at major international conferences. Graham is a Distinguished Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology (China), Northwestern University (China), Zhengzhou University (China) and Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María (Chile). He holds several research grants covering diverse areas including Power Electronics, 3G and 4G Mobile Communications, Ambulance Scheduling, and Artificial Pancreas development. He holds 16 International Patents covering rolling mill technology, telecommunications, mine planning and mineral exploration.

View Abstract

The Application of Advanced Control to the Management of Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 Diabetes is a major health issue. Approximately 1% of the world’s population have this disease. Current treatments are intrusive and often lead to poor outcomes. For example, Diabetes is the sixth highest cause of death in Australia. The disease is particularly debilitating for children who need to regularly take blood glucose measurements and to inject insulin at multiple instants every day.

In the talk, we will outline results obtained as part of an on-going research program aimed at applying advanced control to the management of Diabetes. The work is being carried out by a team of researchers comprising Control Engineers, Endocrinologists, Dieticians, Diabetes Educators and Parents of Children with Diabetes. Some of the control engineering aspects of the project are:

System identification and parameter estimation
Experiment design
Design of sampling strategies
Design of controllers for systems having significant nonlinearities and constraints on inputs and states
Enunciation of fundamental design trade-offs
Combining feedforward and feedback action
Accounting for the high uncertainty associated with future disturbances
Robustness to modelling errors

These concepts, though familiar to control engineers, represent major challenges in the context of diabetes. For example, since patient lives are at stake, there is little or no room for error.

The talk will describe design strategies. Also results obtained from preliminary clinical trials will be presented. It will be argued that Diabetes management is a quintessential example of how control engineers can contribute to the broader field of personalized chronic disease treatment.

Mark Spong

University of Texas at Dallas

Mark W. Spong is the Dean of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research interests are in nonlinear control and robotics. His notable awards include the 2011 Pioneer Award from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, the first IROS Fumio Harashima Award for Innovative Technologies in 2007, the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology Outstanding Paper Award, the Senior Scientist Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Distinguished Member Award from the IEEE Control Systems Society, the John R. Ragazzini and O. Hugo Schuck Awards from the American Automatic Control Council, and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal. He is a Past President of the IEEE Control Systems Society and a Fellow of both the IEEE and IFAC.

View Abstract

Control of Networked Multi-Robot Systems

In this talk we will review our recent work on control of networked systems, including multi-robot cooperative manipulation, connectivity-preserving control, and teleoperation of multi-robot systems. Tools from complex networks theory, passivity-based control, and geometric nonlinear control are combined to deal with human-robot interaction, time-delay compensation, force control, and formation control in both holonomic and nonholonomic systems.