Actualités

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.

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.

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.

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.

Apply now for the opportunity to spend up to six months in an NCCR Automation lab.

This month we are welcoming five new fellowship holders.

Congratulations to Sophie, who presented the paper "Stability Certificates for Receding Horizon Games"

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.

In addition to the 14 new people we welcomed in February, we have five new people joining us in March

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!

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.

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.

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!

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"

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."

L'atelier d'entrepreneuriat Bench2Biz de cette année n'est qu'un des moyens utilisés pour soutenir ce projet prometteur de gestion de l'énergie. Les fondateurs sont déterminés à entrer dans le monde des affaires bien préparés.

Dans un monde fondé sur le partage des infrastructures, comment protéger les plus vulnérables ? Sophie Hall explique pourquoi elle se concentre sur la recherche d'outils théoriques pour construire des systèmes qui ne laisseront personne dans le froid.

Dans un article précédent, Jared Miller et Niklas Schmid ont examiné la signification de la sécurité dans l'ingénierie. Mais comment les différents systèmes d'automatisation mettent-ils en œuvre ces spécifications ?

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.

La sécurité est un critère crucial en matière d'automatisation, mais comment la définir concrètement ? Comment vérifier si nous sommes en sécurité ? Comment s'en assurer ? Jared Miller et Niklas Schmid, membres du PRN Automation, y regardent de plus près. 

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.

Congratulations to NCCR Automation alumnus Gioele Zardini who has been awarded the ETH Doctoral Dissertation Award

Congratulations to NCCR Automation PI Daniel Kuhn for winning the INFORMS Optimization Society 2024 Farkas Prize

Dans le cadre d'un cours de master à l'EPF Zurich, les étudiants apprennent à gérer la prise de décision des robots - et leur travail est ensuite évalués par des robots. Les missions sont disponibles sur GitHub pour que tout le monde puisse les essayer.

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.

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!

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".

What are real challenges in control and automation that industry faces? What are advances in research that could help address them?

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.

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.

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.

Les "jumeaux numériques" ne sont pas réservés à l'industrie. Une application pourrait bientôt aider les agriculteurs à obtenir des recommandations sur mesure pour la gestion des sols en entrant des informations telles que la nature du sol et la météo, ce qui permettrait de réduire les émissions et d'augmenter les rendements. 

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!

Vous connaissez le proverbe: ce qui semble trop beau pour être vrai mérite le scepticisme. Cela ne semble pas être le cas de la bourse du PRN Automation. Mais ne nous croyez pas sur parole, voyez plutôt !