The NCCR Automation brings together theoretical breakthroughs, practical innovations, industrial implementation and inclusive education to advance the field of automation and control systems.
Our research reaches wide as well as deep.
From theoretical foundations to cutting-edge innovation, we’re pushing automation forward.
News & Insights
22-01-2026
If you read about automatic control, you've definitely heard of Model Predictive Control (MPC), but what is it? Let's find out by seeing how some of our researchers are applying it on trains.
21-01-2026
Probabilistic guarantees and academic validation: IfA partners with Google on carbon-aware computing
Sophie Hall, a doctoral student at D-ITET’s Automatic Control Laboratory (IfA) and NCCR Automation, has been researching carbon-aware computing within Google’s global data centre network. Alongside Ana Radovanovic, Technical Lead for Energy Analytics and Carbon-Aware Computing as well as project leader, she shares insights into this unique and mutually beneficial academic-industry collaboration.
08-01-2026
Fabian received the IEEE CSS TC Outstanding Student Paper Award and Engineering in Hydrocephalus Research Award.
08-01-2026
Congratulations to NCCR Automation alumnus Xavier Guidetti, who was awarded the Hilti Prize for Innovative Research for his thesis, "Intelligent Additive Manufacturing: a Holistic Approach to the Optimization of Data-Poor Complex Processes"
07-01-2026
We are happy to announce that a pilot project we have with Mint&Pepper is up and running and in the test phase.
12-12-2025
From self-driving cars to drone swarms and air traffic control, machines that act without human oversight are becoming part of everyday life. But ensuring they operate safely in unpredictable environments is one of the biggest challenges in modern engineering. You can read an interview with our new professor Lars Lindemann where he explains how he tackles this problem.
09-12-2025
Anna Maddux is investigating algorithms that could solve the problem of how to steer agents in a control game without full information. For instance, how to encourage fairer access to ride hailing services.
26-11-2025
Congratulations to Elise Cahard who has been presented with the ALEA Award for exemplary leadership.
18-11-2025
As neural networks pervade our daily life, we need to make sure they can be relied on. Muhammad Zakwan is using tools from control theory to achieve that.
17-11-2025
Relive a great week or see what you missed!
21-10-2025
We are proud to announce three entirely new research projects for NCCR Automation, all centred around the topic of robotics.
01-10-2025
Do you need a break from research? Would you like to learn something new, gain a different perspective? Then you might want to consider doing an industry internships for a few months. Three of our NCCR Automation researchers have done this, and they all strongly recommend it.
15-09-2025
Congratulations to Panagiotis D. Grontas who won for the paper “BIG Hype: Best Intervention in Games via Distributed Hypergradient Descent”.
09-09-2025
Congratulations to Jonas Matt who won the community award and Jared Miller who won the jury award.
08-09-2025
Zappy, robotics workshops for girls and boys, targets 11 to 13 years old in order to introduce them to the robotics world. The courses are free and open to all. The organization of separate workshops for girls and boys with the same content also aims to encourage girls' access to these activities.
14-08-2025
Mengmeng Li was awarded the second place in the 2025 Dupačová-Prékopa Best Student Paper Prize for her paper "Towards Optimal Offline Reinforcement Learning" (co-authored with Daniel Kuhn and Tobias Sutter).
17-07-2025
This time host Alberto Padoan takes us on a deep dive into some of the main pillars of modern control theory. From Kalman's paradigm-shifting state-space approach to the space race, complex networks, and more...
07-07-2025
This year’s John von Neumann Lecture explored “Privacy for the Paranoid Ones”, but paranoia isn’t really the point. The point is to win an ancient game.
03-07-2025
Congratulations to Jan Brändle, who won the medal for his thesis which focused on quantification of the flexibility potential of real-world distribution grids.
23-06-2025
Florian Dörfler has been awarded this year’s Rössler Prize in recognition of his pioneering contributions to the fields of energy and control engineering. The award, worth CHF 200,000, is the most generous research prize at ETH Zurich and was presented to him at the ETH Foundation’s annual thanksgiving event.
18-06-2025
Maitraya Desai is a doctoral student in the Power Systems Laboratory, researching at the intersection of power systems, power electronics and control. In this interview, he explains a novel control approach for grid-forming converters that could enhance the stability of future power grids, especially with high penetration of renewable energy sources.
17-06-2025
Congratulations to the NCCR Automation team.
13-06-2025
This body will advise the Executive Board on fundamental issues such as the direction of ETH's strategy, the role of universities in sustainable development and international developments related to sustainability.
30-05-2025
The KlimUp prize supports start-ups in with a focus on climate protection.
09-05-2025
When it comes to optimising energy efficiency on the railways, speed is of the essence – but not for the drivers! It’s in the computations that faster really is better.
05-05-2025
Join us for the 2025 John von Neumann lecture as Artur Ekert (University of Oxford, Centre for Quantum Technologies) guides us through "Privacy for the paranoid ones - the ultimate limits of secrecy"
22-04-2025
Our latest fact sheet, co-authored with SATW, shows application cases for AI.
16-04-2025
What do Alpiq, GWF, Hamilton Medical, VAT, and Zurich Insurance have in common? A deep interest in control and optimisation! We were happy to host them at the third iteration of our Workshop on Control and Computational Methods together with researchers from ETH, EPFL, Empa, ZHAW, FHNW, OST, and Inspire AG.
16-04-2025
NCCR Automation offers travel grants for eligible researchers to attend and present their research at CLOCK 2025.
We invite applications from master’s students, PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty members from Universities in geographical regions that are under-represented in the Control and Automation community. This is a fantastic chance to engage with experts in the field, present your work in the poster session, and gain insights into the latest research developments.
We invite applications from master’s students, PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty members from Universities in geographical regions that are under-represented in the Control and Automation community. This is a fantastic chance to engage with experts in the field, present your work in the poster session, and gain insights into the latest research developments.
15-04-2025
This time host Alberto Padoan is talking to Miroslav Krstić (UC San Diego) about nonlinear adaptive control, PDEs, delays, extremum seeking, safety and neural operators for control.
08-04-2025
How do you boil down years of work to a three minute talk? Watch Pengbo Zhu summarise her thesis in 180 seconds and see how she is hoping to make your taxi rides better.
07-04-2025
Apply now for the opportunity to spend up to six months in an NCCR Automation lab.
01-04-2025
This month we are welcoming five new fellowship holders.
28-03-2025
Congratulations to Sophie, who presented the paper "Stability Certificates for Receding Horizon Games"
24-03-2025
The new hub for Computation, Learning, Optimization & Control. Taking place in Engelberg, Switzerland from 2-5th September 2025, the event offers inspiring plenary talks from world-class researchers, interactive poster sessions with a best poster award, engaging workshops, panel discussions and networking opportunities.
03-03-2025
In addition to the 14 new people we welcomed in February, we have five new people joining us in March
24-02-2025
In this episode Manfred Morari traces his journey from chemical process control to IMC, robust and predictive control, MPC, and lessons from a career spanning ETH Zürich, University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Caltech and University of Pennsylvania. From theory to real-world impact, this episode is a must-listen for any control enthusiast!
10-02-2025
We are happy to welcome the first of our fellowship winners from 2024's call. Our fellows will be arriving throughout the spring and staying with us for a period of up to six months.
04-02-2025
Researcher Sophie Hall recently spoke to Richard Delevan on the Wicked Problems podcast about the need to democratise the algorithms in our lives. Give it a listen in the link below.
20-01-2025
New episode! 🎙️ Today, we dive into Richard Bellman’s legacy as the father of dynamic programming. 🧠 From his early life in Brooklyn to Princeton, Los Alamos, RAND, and Stanford, we explore his monumental contributions to control theory, which set the stage for modern AI breakthroughs!
13-01-2025
Congratulations to Ezzat Elokda who has been presented with the Young Author Award at the 5th IFAC Workshop on Cyber-Physical and Human Systems (CPHS) for his paper "To Travel Quickly or to Park Conveniently: Coupled Resource Allocations with Multi-Karma Economies"
07-01-2025
Congratulations to Mahrokh Ghoddousi Boroujeni who has received the Outstanding Student Paper Award at IEEE CDC 2024 for her paper titled "A PAC-Bayesian Framework for Optimal Control with Stability Guarantees."
19-12-2024
This year’s Bench2Biz entrepreneurship workshop is just one of the channels being drawn on to support a promising energy management project. The founders are determined to enter the business world well prepared.
18-12-2024
In a world underpinned by shared infrastructure, how do we protect the most vulnerable? Sophie Hall explains why she is focused on finding the theoretical tools to build systems that won’t leave anyone out in the cold.
16-12-2024
In a previous post, Jared Miller and Niklas Schmid looked at what safety means in engineering. But how do different automation systems implement those specifications?
11-12-2024
Timothy Asare and Goodnews Iduku, who will be among the first students to graduate from the joint Ashesi-ETH Master's in Mechatronic Engineering, visited us for two weeks earlier this autumn. Together, they are setting up an optimisation framework for a renewable energy grid at the Ashesi University campus, supervised by Varsha Behrunani and John Lygeros.
10-12-2024
Safety is a crucial criterion in automation, but how can we actually define it? How can we verify whether we are safe? How can we make sure? NCCR members Jared Miller and Niklas Schmid take a closer look.
05-12-2024
Mark your calendars! 🗓️ 2-5 September 2025 – Engelberg, Switzerland
Join us at the Swiss CLOCK Summit, a new event bringing together the top minds in Computation, Learning, Optimization, and Control.
Join us at the Swiss CLOCK Summit, a new event bringing together the top minds in Computation, Learning, Optimization, and Control.
02-12-2024
Congratulations to NCCR Automation alumnus Gioele Zardini who has been awarded the ETH Doctoral Dissertation Award
14-11-2024
Congratulations to NCCR Automation PI Daniel Kuhn for winning the INFORMS Optimization Society 2024 Farkas Prize
24-10-2024
In a Master’s course at ETH, students are learning how to guide robotic decision making – and having their work graded by robots too.
22-10-2024
We are happy to announce that seven new industry collaboration projects will start in Phase II, leading to shared work that will bring our research into society. You can read details of the funded projects below.
17-10-2024
Munther Dahleh (MIT) takes us from L1 control theory to agile robotic manoeuvres, abstractions, cascaded failures in networks, markets, and the role of data and systems thinking in solving societal problems. Don’t miss out!
30-09-2024
Congratulations to new PhD student Fabian Böhm who was awarded the EHG-Prize by "Energie- und Hochspannungstechnische Gesellschaft an der RWTH Aachen e.V. " for his Master's thesis "Laboratory Implementation of Curative Flexibility Deployments in Distribution Grids Using Online Feedback Optimization".
26-09-2024
What are real challenges in control and automation that industry faces? What are advances in research that could help address them?
26-09-2024
This year’s EnergyDataHackdays took place on 16-17th September in Brugg. The event is designed to bring together people to work on some of the biggest challenges to the energy sector, and see how automation can play a part.
13-09-2024
Congratulations to Fabian Flürenbrock who won the award for his paper Model-Based Estimation of Ventricular Cerebrospinal Fluid Volume, authored by Fabian Flürenbrock, Simon Muntwiler, Leonie Korn, Marianne Schmid Daners, Melanie N. Zeilinger.
05-09-2024
You've probably heard of reinforcement learning (or RL for short) if you've spent any time reading about technology or control theory, but what does it really mean? Let us explain.
02-09-2024
“Digital twins” aren’t just for industry. Plugging details such as soil conditions and weather into an app could soon help farmers to get tailor-made crop management recommendations, cutting emissions while increasing yield.
21-08-2024
Through the lens of linear algebra, Bart De Moor guides us through the foundations of system identification to SVD applications, SVMs, quantum information, tensor algebra, and time series geometry —all the way to the very roots of system modelling!
29-07-2024
You know what they say: if something sounds too good to be true… Except maybe in the case of the NCCR Automation fellowship. Don’t just take our word for it!
23-07-2024
We talked with the visiting game theorist about fake news, selfish routing and the mutual relationship between computer science and other fields.
18-07-2024
Investigating fundamental mathematical problems can generate results that deliver serious real-world benefits as well as taking research forward and helping other engineers. Dr. Mengshuo Jia’s work on linearity, and the resulting toolkit, is a great example.
15-07-2024
Host Alberto Padoan meets Francesco Bullo (UC Santa Barbara) to explore his research journey, from early work in geometric control and robotics to robotic networks, cyber-physical systems, mathematical sociology, all the way to contraction theory and neural networks!
08-07-2024
To scale up innovation, we need to bring research closer to real-world industrial needs. A new book by NCCR Automation researchers looks into how that can be achieved, and where the most exciting progress is right now.
01-07-2024
The NCCR Automation has won the SNSF's Lighthouse Award in the Open Science category for its Data Kiosk, an app that provides simple, attractive, centralised access to public data.
01-07-2024
Climate control is a major contributor to trains’ energy usage – which means it offers a major opportunity for savings. Ahmed Aboudonia is chasing that opportunity.
18-06-2024
The IEEE CSS Swiss Chapter Young Author Best Journal Paper Award 2024 was presented during the NCCR Automation annual retreat in June 2024.
13-06-2024
Calling Master's students, PhDc and Postdocs based outside Switzerland! We have just opened this year's call for applications for the NCCR Automation fellowship programme. If you are interested to spend a period of up to six months in one of our labs you can now send in your application.
05-06-2024
On May 22, NCCR Automation hosted its first Industry & Academia Workshop on Control and Computation Methods to connect research and industry.
31-05-2024
Everyone has heard of the so-called “Google Algorithm” and other social media algorithms used to find the most compelling content for each person. But what does that actually mean? How does it work and what is going on inside your computer?
28-05-2024
What does stability mean in control theory, and what do shapes have to do with it? Grab a pen, an empty toilet roll and a pair of scissors: Wouter Jongeneel has something to teach you.
22-05-2024
Congratulations to NCCR Automation PI Maryam Kamgarpour, who has been named winner of the European Control Award for 2024 by the European Control Association.
17-05-2024
The first member event of Reallabor Sisslerfeld took place recently and brought together over 50 stakeholders from industry, science and regional organisations and political representatives from the municipalities and the canton of Aargau. The workshop aimed to set goals for collaboration and innovation in the field of sustainable urban development and to exchange initial concrete ideas.
15-05-2024
Experiments by ETH Zurich and NCCR Automation computer security researchers showed that smartphones can be manipulated to allow the owner to ride Swiss trains for free. The researchers also highlighted ways of curbing such misuse.
07-05-2024
Congratulations to NCCR Automation PI Kaveh Razavi for receiving the Jochen Lietke Young Researcher Award.
11-04-2024
We enlisted model cars and alien robots to give a taste of the excitement of working with robotics to kids and teens from diverse backgrounds.
28-03-2024
In this call, the NCCR Automation is looking to fund industry collaboration and technology transfer projects that have a very concrete impact on Swiss industry and society.
19-03-2024
This publication is a collaboration between the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) and the National Center of Competence in Research Automation (NCCR Automation). It aims to provide small and medium-sized distribution grid operators, energy supply companies and decision-makers in Switzerland an overview of the upcoming changes in the energy system. The publication also aims to highlight the resulting opportunities, innovative technologies, possible solutions and new business areas to ensure a reliable and profitable energy supply by 2050.
15-03-2024
Today we embark on a voyage through EDA history with the legendary Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli! 🚀 From classical studies to revolutionizing electronic design, we cover SPICE, the iconic Intel x386, and the genesis of multibillion-dollar Cadence and Synopsis!
06-03-2024
A big idea isn’t enough – academics with entrepreneurial goals often feel lost when they try to turn their ideas into products. The bench2biz workshops exist to show you the way to success.
15-02-2024
The most everyday problems are sometimes the most resistant to efficient solutions. Dual sourcing inventory control is an example: it’s harder than you might think to balance speedy delivery against cost. But machine learning can help.
13-02-2024
Fused deposition modelling is a genuinely transformative technology, but unreliable and imprecise results mean there is still a huge gap between its potential and what it actually delivers. Xavier Guidetti is using feedback and optimisation to close that gap.
15-01-2024
Naomi Ehrich Leonard, Part II: Unveiling the Dynamics of Collective Decision-Making from Flocking Starlings to Desert Ants, Political Polarization, and the Creative Dance Between Arts and Control Theory.
12-01-2024
If you've heard about game theory but don't really know what it is or what it means, this game by Nicky Case is a great starting point. (please note that Nicky Case is not associated with NCCR Automation - we just think this is a great resource).
11-01-2024
NCCR Automation researchers from the Automatic Control Laboratory, ETH Zurich and the electricity supplier AEW Energie AG have won the 2024 Watt d’Or award in the Energy Technologies category. Their algorithm, which was implemented at AEW Energie, makes it possible to optimise electricity grid operations.
13-12-2023
This time host Alberto Padoan talks to Naomi Leonard (Princeton University) about how bees choose their next nest site, how starlings maintain formations to escape predators, and the curious connection between dancing and control theory. 🐝 🐥 💃 🕺
11-12-2023
New episode alert!🎙️Part II of our fascinating journey with Tryphon Georgiou is live! 🚀 This episode takes you beyond robustness and feedback systems, exploring the dazzling realms of quantum mechanics, turbulence, optimal transport, and elusive “aha moments”! 🌐✨
06-12-2023
Last week NCCR Automation members Saverio Bolognani and Nicolas Lanzetti went to the Kantonsschule Zürcher Unterland in Bülach with the SATW TechDays.
04-12-2023
This serious condition affects sufferers from babies to the elderly, and yet the treatment hasn’t changed in 70 years. We’re working on that.
27-11-2023
Keep up to date with the NomadZ robotic football team here, where team member Nicole Damblon tells us how their 2023 has gone.
24-11-2023
Congratulations to two NCCR Automation researchers who have won SNSF Swiss National Science Foundation grants this week. Niao He who won a starting grant for her project “Optimization for Modern Reinforcement Learning: from Principles to Scalability” and Mengshuo Jia who won for a project on rethinking power system computation from a fundamental and non-traditional perspective.
15-11-2023
As a journal editor and award-winning researcher, Francis Bach has his finger on the pulse of AI. He talked to us about exciting new findings, how to spread ideas, and why convexity isn’t always the right goal.
14-11-2023
New episode of the inControl podcast! At our recent NCCR Symposium host Alberto Padoan grabbed Tryphon Georgiou (UC Irvine) for a two part chat on modeling, robustness and fundamental limitations of feedback systems. This episode covers marathons, interpolation problems, metrics and the interplay between feedback and causality.
09-11-2023
Congratulations to Wouter Jongeneel who has won the 2023 INFORMS Optimization Society Award for his paper "Small Errors in Random Zeroth-Order Optimization are Imaginary" (co-authored with Man-Chung Yue and Daniel Kuhn)
07-11-2023
Congratulations to Paolo Gherardo Carlet, Andrea Favato, Saverio Bolognani and Florian Dorfler for winning the Transactions on Power Electronics (TPEL) Prize Paper Award for their paper "Data-Driven Continuous-Set Predictive Current Control for Synchronous Motor Drives"
02-11-2023
Common traffic mitigation solutions have a problem: they’re intrinsically unfair. Charging for access shifts the burden of congestion to those less able to pay for it. Our researchers may have found a way around this issue.
24-10-2023
On October 24, 2023, the founding meeting of the "Reallabor Sisslerfeld" took place in Münchwilen. The "Verein" (association) will concentrate on creating a living lab for energy and mobility topics. Among those present at the ceremony were Dieter Egli, Cantonal Government Councillor of Aargau and the President of ETH Zurich, Joël Mesot, as well as other high-ranking representatives from politics, administration, research and industry.
24-10-2023
We're back with Season 2! 🎉 In our first episode, Davide Scaramuzza from University of Zurich takes us on a journey through magic, autonomous vision-based navigation, agile drone racing, and event-based cameras. 🤖 Ready for takeoff?
10-10-2023
The Third Champéry Power Conference on 4-9 February 2024 is organized by the Institute of Sustainable Energy at the School of Engineering of Valais and the Automatic Control Laboratory of the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich. NCCR Automation are proud to sponsor this event.
03-10-2023
In the last week of September we welcomed 80 people to the NCCR Symposium on Complex Interconnected Systems and decision making in measure spaces. This is how it went...
02-10-2023
The distinction between “convex” or “non-convex” optimization isn’t just a technicality. Convexity makes for calculations that can guarantee the best result in an automated process – here’s how.
02-10-2023
Thank you to Control Systems Magazine who featured NCCR Automation as their Institute in Control.
12-09-2023
Each year, NCCR Automation works with a number of our sister NCCRs to put on the bench2biz event, a two week workshop for pre-seed research ideas. Each year, carefully curated experts are invited to join to give advice and feedback, and as this initiative is run through the NCCRs, the organisers can give personalized, tailored feedback and coaching.
For 2022’s edition, NCCR Automation member Manos Barmpounakis took part and was coached by KTT officer Ben Sawicki. We asked Manos for his thoughts on the experience.
For 2022’s edition, NCCR Automation member Manos Barmpounakis took part and was coached by KTT officer Ben Sawicki. We asked Manos for his thoughts on the experience.
04-09-2023
Apply by the end of September to spend a period of up to six months in an NCCR Automation lab.
15-08-2023
Mathematician Yurii Nesterov is one of the main actors in the field of Convex Optimization, which is crucial for many applications in Automation. Thanks in part to his breakthroughs, that field is expanding to touch many other disciplines. He’s not as happy with that as you might think.
14-08-2023
Humans have been trying to do more with less for a very long time. We’d like cars and planes that go further but use less fuel and have a smaller carbon footprint. We’d like food that is optimally nutritious but also affordable, and we’d like energy solutions for our house, cities and countries that are effective but also green and affordable.
07-07-2023
The jury gave the following motivation: "The paper is being recognized for making a timely contribution to address noise-corrupted datasets in data-driven modeling and control through a principled statistical approach. The paper stands out for its completeness and high-impact potential in applications including predictive control and system identification".
05-07-2023
In the changing energy landscape, flexibility is emerging as a new market – but how can it be properly traded when so much is uncertain? Julie Rousseau is creating a model to factor in the complexities of real life.
04-07-2023
Congratulations to Varsha Behrunani for winning best poster award at the DTU PES summer school: Advances in OR and AI
29-06-2023
Preparations for this year's RoboCup, which will take place in Bordeaux, France, are in full swing. This international robot soccer tournament brings together student teams from different countries to compete in 7-on-7 matches. In addition to the competition, RoboCup also serves as a robotics conference.
20-06-2023
Many congratulations to Baiwei Guo for winning Best PhD Paper Award at ECC23.
08-06-2023
Even as the possibilities of Internet of Things applications multiply, growth is being held back by energy challenges. One strategy is energy harvesting, but that comes with fundamental limitations. Naomi Stricker is working on solutions.
09-05-2023
We hosted 100 people at ETH's conference centre in Monte Verita, Ticino, and what a week we had!
24-04-2023
At a time when countries around the world are threatened with energy shortages, ETH Zurich and NCCR Automation researchers have developed a high-impact, low-cost software solution to improve resilience and efficiency. This innovative approach enables providers to make the most of decentralized energy resources such as photovoltaic systems through flexible, responsive, and data-driven operation.
27-03-2023
While neural networks often achieve impressive performance, they sometimes fail to capture simple concepts that humans understand intuitively – a gap that may even put lives at risk. But can we transfer our human knowledge to neural networks to help them learn more meaningful solutions? NCCR Automation researcher Loris Di Natale has a plan to make sure automated machines don’t freeze us out.
23-03-2023
Julie Rousseau is a PhD student at ETH Zurich and Empa looking at stabilising the energy grid.
23-03-2023
Anna Scampicchio is a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich who does theoretical research on why some systems behave the way they do.
22-03-2023
Rahel Rickenbach is a PhD student at the Institute of Dynamic Systems and Control, at ETH Zurich.
21-03-2023
Jelena Trisovic is a Ph.D. student at the ETH AI Center, she obtained an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from ETH Zürich and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computing from the University of Belgrade.
17-03-2023
Alisa Rupenyan is a senior scientist at the Automatic Control Lab at ETH Zurich and Head of the Advanced Control and IoT group at Inspire, the technology transfer organization at ETH Zurich. She leads research projects in the intersection between process optimization, industrial control, and machine learning for applications strongly connected to manufacturing.
16-03-2023
Clara Galimberti is a PhD student at EPFL. She received her degree in Electronic Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Rosario (UNR), Argentina, in 2018. Her research lies at the intersection of machine learning and control theory.
13-03-2023
Maryam Kamgarpour leads the Sycamore lab at EPFL. Her theoretical research is motivated by control challenges arising in intelligent transportation networks, robotics, power grid systems and healthcare.
15-02-2023
We are thrilled to announce that after a highly competitive round of financing calls for industry-academia projects, NCCR Automation has invested CHF 2.1 million in research into ten new, collaborative research projects. Projects will be hosted within an NCCR Automation lab and will continue with this funding for approximately two years, before being spun out in other formats.
10-02-2023
Congratulations to NCCR Automation PI Silvia Mastellone who has been elected the board of governors of the IEEE Control System Society.
25-01-2023
Loris Di Natale and Muhammad Zakwan are the perfect example of the interdisciplinarity fostered within NCCR Automation. They met during a project meeting and, after many months of exchange dedicated two full weeks of their time to drive their idea forward and to publish a paper. Several extensions of the initial idea are in the works so stay tuned for updates!
16-01-2023
This time Alberto Padoan chats with Anuradha Annaswamy (MIT) about Adaptive Control and its exciting history, starting from the Brave Era to the audacious X15 tests and to modern intersections with RL.
13-01-2023
Congratulations to NCCR PI Vasco Medici and his team for winning the Watt d'Or 2023 for their three year project that successfully demonstrated that an intelligently networked and controlled combination of electricity consumers and solar power producers can significantly increase self-sufficiency.
23-12-2022
The NCCR members Luca Furieri and Maryam Kamgarpour have won the 2022 Best Paper Award in the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems for the paper "Sparsity Invariance for Convex Design of Distributed Controllers" by Luca Furieri, Yang Zheng, Antonis Papachristodoulou and Maryam Kamgarpour.
13-12-2022
Congratulations to our PI Srdjan Capkun who has just been named IEEE Fellow for his contributions to wireless and systems security
02-12-2022
In today's episode of the InControl podcast host Alberto Padoan talks to Jean-Jacques Slotine (Director of the Nonlinear Systems Laboratory at MIT and Distinguished Faculty at Google AI) about his inspiring journey through nonlinear and adaptive control, complex networks, optimization and machine learning
24-11-2022
NCCR Automation provides junior researchers with the means for funding activities related to research or NCCR structure-related activities (Communication, Education, Equal Opportunity and KTT).
23-11-2022
Congratulations to NCCR members Kaveh Razavi, Michele Marazzi and Melanie Zeilinger who, along with their teams, have been presented with "Golden Owl" awards for innovative teaching by the student association of ETH Zurich.
18-11-2022
NCCR Automation is opening its first call for research projects in collaboration with industry partners.
07-11-2022
Congratulations to PhD student Bahar Taskesen who has won the informs Optimization Society Student Paper Prize for her paper "Semi-Discrete Optimal Transport: Hardness, Regularization, and Numerical Solution".
13-10-2022
Researchers of the NCCR Automation work together with partners from industry to contribute to a successful transition to a sustainable energy system.
05-10-2022
Researchers of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation, ETH Zurich and Empa have developed novel control strategies for heating systems in buildings. In tests under real life settings, they managed to reduce energy use for heating by up to 49 percent.
28-09-2022
We are happy to welcome three new PIs to NCCR Automation.
01-09-2022
Last year, researchers discovered vulnerabilities in commonly used memory devices that potentially put users of any kind of computer at risk. So far, the efforts of vendors to implement security mechanisms inside the chips have been unsuccessful. Scientists of ETH Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation have now developed a mechanism by which the security risks are mitigated.
22-08-2022
11-08-2022
06-08-2022
In this episode, our guest is Alessandro Chiuso. Alessandro is a Professor in the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Padova. The episode covers several topics, including Alessandro’s research trajectory, his work in system identification and vision, and his passion for skiing.
14-07-2022
ETH Zurich and NCCR Automation researchers have discovered a serious security vulnerability in computer hardware. The vulnerability, called "Retbleed," affects microprocessors from market leaders Intel and AMD. All commercially available operating systems worldwide that use these processors are affected. When computers execute special calculation steps to compute faster, they leave traces that hackers could abuse.
06-07-2022
For years, there has been an imbalance at Swiss universities: students are comparatively less interested in mathematics, computer science, technical disciplines and natural sciences than in the humanities and social sciences. Various efforts have been made to counteract this development. The members of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation also contribute to this. For example, by visiting schools to introduce their research topics to pupils and to awaken their fascination for them.
30-06-2022
At the end of June, the members and associates of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation met in Caux for their annual retreat. High above Lac Léman, participants from all seven institutions used the time to plan the future of the NCCR, develop educational programmes and to catch up with each other after last year's virtual event.
17-06-2022
Research in automated control and machine learning done at the NCCR Automation helps to prepare industrial manufacturing for the future. Thus, manufacturing not only becomes more efficient and adaptable, but will also waste less material and require less energy, making the process more sustainable.
10-06-2022
A group of 20 Bachelor students from the Chen-Ning Yang Scholars Programme based at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore travelled to Zurich to familiarize themselves with the research of NCCR Automation and to closely experience its experimental facilities at ETH Zurich.
10-06-2022
Swissnex is the Swiss global network connecting Switzerland and the world in education, research and innovation. In May, a team of delegates from various worldwide locations visited the NCCR Automation at ETH Zurich to learn about its research areas and goals.
10-06-2022
Prof. Kaveh Razavi, head of the Computer Security group and Principal Investigator at the NCCR Automation, wants to increase the security of computer hardware and microprocessors with a new approach. To this end, he has subsequently received an ERC Starting Grant. Due to Switzerland's exclusion from funding by the European Research Council ERC, the project is now being funded by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI.
10-06-2022
Adapting to unexpected conditions is difficult for algorithms. Neither classical model based approaches nor modern machine learning methods that rely on data offer a convincing solution. Members of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation therefore suggest to combine the best of both.
10-06-2022
Autonomous driving remains a major challenge in automation and control research. Members of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation work on innovative approaches to solve aspects of this challenge.
09-06-2022
A two-part symposium hosted by ETH Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation brought together globally leading experts from the field of control theory to present their latest research and discuss what role their field can play in improving the interaction of algorithms with the real world.
20-05-2022
NCCR Automation postdoc Alberto Padoan launched the first podcast on control theory and related topics. In it, thrilling guests discuss feedback, decision making, artificial intelligence, robotics and many more topics. The podcast is supported by the NCCR Automation.
10-03-2022
David Shaw is an ethicist in the midst of a consortium filled with electrical engineers, computer scientists and control theorists. In this interview, he explains why automation and ethics cannot be separated and what he plans to work on in the context of the NCCR Automation.
08-03-2022
In collaboration with the Swiss Association of Women Engineers (SVIN) and NCCR Digital Fabrication (DFAB), the NCCR Automation organised an interactive webinar on The Power of Networking to provide insights and tools for establishing a network effectively.
03-03-2022
In his research on uncertain optimisation problems, Daniel Kuhn takes the role of a kind of ropedancer. In this way, he is contributing to the dependable automated future that the NCCR Automation is striving for. In this interview, the recent winner of the Humbolt Foundation award provides insights into his work.
24-02-2022
A team of researchers of the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich and the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation investigated how social media influencers arise and communities form around them. Their results may lead to measures that mitigate the polarization that occurs on these platforms.
11-02-2022
Kaveh Razavi is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich and recently joined the NCCR Automation. With his research, he aims to improve the security of hardware components used in future infrastructure such as CPU or DRAM devices.
24-12-2021
23-12-2021
As part of the Bench2Biz workshops, a team led by Carlo Cenedese explored his research results for commercialization potential. There, Carlo gained insights from various different viewpoints and benefitted from honest feedback within a safe environment from which he could potentially launch his entrepreneurial career.
17-12-2021
In Girls In Control workshops, Swiss elementary school students have the chance to connect mathematics to the real world – and be inspired to be the next generation of women to join the field of Automation.
17-12-2021
The first Junior Retreat was organised in October 2021 in the Congress Hotel Seepark in Thun. It was the occasion for most of our PhD students and Postdocs to meet physically for the first time. This was a successful event organised by their peers. All researchers are looking forward next year!
26-11-2021
In the last week of November, the first Site Visit of the NCCR Automation by the SNSF and the external Review Panel took place. Overall it was a very successful and fruitful event, resulting in plenty of food for thought for us.
17-11-2021
Researchers at ETH Zurich have discovered major vulnerabilities in DRAM memory devices, which are widely used in computers, tablets and smartphones. The vulnerabilities have now been published together with the National Cyber Security Centre, which for the first time has assigned an identification number for it.
15-10-2021
Traditional control schemes rely on mathematical knowledge of the system they control. Yet this knowledge is not always available – for example, when the system is very complex. Researchers of the EPFL and the NCCR Automation have developed a novel scheme that effectively controls systems based on measured data alone – even when the data is inaccurate.
14-10-2021
Researchers of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation, led by Alessandro Zanardi of ETH Zurich, have investigated how autonomous vehicles could become better road users in an urban environment. The result is both surprisingly simple and complex at the same time.
14-10-2021
Naomi Stricker is in the third year of her PhD at the Computer Engineering Group at ETH Zurich, in which she focuses on making energy harvesting systems more robust and able to communicate and collaborate. Her research could help do anything from heating buildings more efficiently to monitoring air quality.
14-10-2021
Mahsa Rahimi-Siegrist is a doctoral student and research assistant at the Institute for Transport Planning and Systems at ETH Zurich and a member of the NCCR Automation. She is interested in the behavior of public transport passengers and works on improving information strategies to increase the quality of transport services.
14-10-2021
Swiss electricity generation has a very low carbon footprint. However, this is often not the case for imports. Researchers from the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation, led by Loris di Natale from EMPA, investigated how electric cars could help reduce the need for energy imports from fossil fuels.
29-09-2021
NCCR Automation took part in its first Hackathon, the 2021 Energy Data Hackdays, where we proposed a challenge, gained experience with the open innovation culture and inspiration for our moon-shoot project.
28-09-2021
13-09-2021
NCCR Automation Seminar Series is a weekly seminar covering broad topics of interests for the NCCR Automation.
07-07-2021
Congratulations to our PI and Executive Committee member Giancarlo Ferrari Trecate who founded the Control Systems Society Chapter of the IEEE Swiss Section. He is now the chair of this chapter.
10-06-2021
Pengbo Zhu is a first year PhD researcher who joined the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Automation last October. With the help of intelligent systems, she works on improving the spatial distribution of shared vehicles. In doing so, Zhu hopes to positively impact quality of life in cities around the world.
01-06-2021
Mahrokh Ghoddousiboroujeni is a first year PhD researcher, who joined the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) on Automation last November. The algorithms she works on could one day help to keep an increasingly renewable electrical grid in balance.
17-05-2021
NCCR Automation is opening its network to new members to address the social science dimension of automation and to strengthen its research on embedded systems, cyber-security and data science.
12-04-2021
As part of the #NCCRWomen campaign, five of the NCCR Automation Women introduced their research to show young people of high school or undergraduate age who they are, what they do and why they do it.
12-01-2021
The NCCR Automation is a large-scale research network funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. John Lygeros, director of the program, explains why such an effort is needed and what the more than 40 researchers are working on.
12-01-2021
The website of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) "Dependable ubiquitous automation" is online.
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