Prof. Frank Allgöwer
Institut für Systemtheorie und Regelungstechnik
Universität Stuttgart
In the future the dynamical behavior of many relevant systems will be characterized by the joint behavior of possibly large numbers of heterogeneous subsystems that are interconnected via some form of communication network. Examples for this are traffic systems, energy systems, manufacturing systems, cooperating robots or telecommunication networks. In addition such networked systems also play an important role in biology or for example in social groups. The development of systematic approaches to solving decision making problems in such networked cyber-physical systems will of course be of crucial importance but poses new challenges to many fields of science including control, communication and computer science. In this talk we will discuss these challenges and some solution approaches from the view of systems and control theory. With a number of examples we will demonstrate the current state of the art and propose research directions for the future.
Frank Allgower is director of the Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. He studied Engineering Cybernetics and Applied Mathematics in Stuttgart and at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) respectively and received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Stuttgart. Prior to his present appointment he held a professorship in the electrical engineering department at ETH Zurich and visiting positions at Caltech, the NASA Ames Research Center, the DuPont Company and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Frank Allgower's main research interests are in the area of systems and control with emphasis on the development of new methods for the analysis and control of nonlinear systems. Application interests range from control of mechatronic systems to the new field of systems biology. At present Frank Allgower is Editor for the journal Automatica and serves as Associate Editor or on the editorial board of several further journals. He is on the scientific council of the German Society for Measurement and Control, is on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Control System Society, is on the Council of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), and is chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the IEEE Control System Society. He received several recognitions for his work including the IEEE distinguished lectureship, the appointment as IFAC Fellow, the Landeslehrpreis Baden-Württemberg, and the Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.