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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

NCCR Automation Seminar Series is a weekly seminar covering broad topics of interests for the NCCR Automation.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.