Keep up with the action

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.

“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.  

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!

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!

We talked with the visiting game theorist about fake news, selfish routing and the mutual relationship between computer science and other fields.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

The IEEE CSS Swiss Chapter Young Author Best Journal Paper Award 2024 was presented during the NCCR Automation annual retreat in June 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.

On May 22, NCCR Automation hosted its first Industry & Academia Workshop on Control and Computation Methods to connect research and industry.

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?

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.

Congratulations to NCCR Automation PI Maryam Kamgarpour, who has been named winner of the European Control Award for 2024 by the European Control Association.

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.

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.

Congratulations to NCCR Automation PI Kaveh Razavi for receiving the Jochen Lietke Young Researcher Award.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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. 🐝 🐥 💃 🕺

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”! 🌐✨

Last week NCCR Automation members Saverio Bolognani and Nicolas Lanzetti went to the Kantonsschule Zürcher Unterland in Bülach with the SATW TechDays.

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.

Keep up to date with the NomadZ robotic football team here, where team member Nicole Damblon tells us how their 2023 has gone.

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.

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.

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.

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)