Control of Inhomogeneous Dynamic Ensembles

Virtual Informal Systems Seminar (VISS) Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM) and Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherche en Analyse des Decisions (GERAD)

Zoom Link
Meeting ID: 910 7928 6959        
Passcode: VISS

Speaker: Jr-Shin Li, Professor, Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis

Abstract:  Natural and engineered systems that consist of populations of isolated or interacting dynamical components exhibit levels of complexity that are beyond human comprehension. These complex systems often require an appropriate excitation, an optimal hierarchical organization, or a periodic dynamical structure, such as synchrony, to function as desired or operate optimally. In many application domains, e.g., neurostimulation in brain medicine and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging in quantum control, control and observation can only be implemented at the population level, through broadcasting a single input signal to all the systems in the population and through collecting aggregated system-level measurements of the population, respectively.
These limitations give rise to challenging problems and new control paradigms involving underactuated manipulation of dynamic ensembles. This talk will address theoretical and computational challenges for manipulation and targeted coordination of ensemble systems arising in diverse areas at different scales. Both model-based and data-driven methods for learning, computation, and control of collective behavior and dynamic patterns in ensemble systems will be presented. Practical control designs, including synchronization waveforms for pattern formation in complex networks and optimal pulses in quantum control, will be illustrated along with their experimental realizations.

Biography: Dr. Jr-Shin Li is Professor of Systems Science and Mathematics in the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also holds a joint appointment in the Division of Biology & Biomedical Sciences (DBBS) since he joined Washington University in 2006. Dr. Li received his B.S. and M.S. from National Taiwan University, and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 2006. His research interests lie in the areas of systems, computational, and data sciences, and their applications to biology, neuroscience, quantum physics, brain medicine, and public health. He is a recipient of the NSF Career Award in 2008 and the AFOSR Young Investigator Award in 2010. He is currently Associate Editor of the SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization (SICON) and the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology (TCST).