Message from the Coordinator

October 1, 2009 will be remembered as a landmark in the life of our DYSCO network. The King's visit to our network put a great spotlight on the activities of our network and its achievements over a period of almost 20 years.

As you have certainly seen on the special webpage that we put on our DYSCO website, all conditions were met to make this visit a success. The weather was nice, the Euler building was as new, the technical presentations by Rodolphe Sepulchre, Jan Van Impe, Moritz Diehl and Philippe Lefčvre were both captivating and enjoyable, and most importantly we were given an opportunity to present our network to a high level delegation of people.

Besides the King and the members of his Scientific Advisory Council, the delegation included Madame Laruelle, Federal Minister for Science, Mevrouw Monard, Secretary General of the FWO, Madame Halloin, Secretary General of the FNRS, and Professor Andreas De Leenheer, President of the Federal Council for Scientific Policy, as well as a number of other people from the Palace, the Ministry and BELSPO.

The focus of the day was on the IAP programme and what this programme contributes to the scientists and to the economic development of our two communities, but the demonstration of the efficiency of this programme was made by highlighting the remarkable trajectory of our systems and control community over a 20-year time-span. The preparation of this visit has enabled me to reflect on where we came from and where we are now after 20 years of collaborative work within our DYSCO network. I know it is not fashionable to make claims of success, but my personal view is that if I compare the state of our Belgian systems and control community today with what it was when we started our IAP network 20 years ago, the progress is nothing but astonishing. In 1990, we were almost nowhere; very few of the members of our tiny systems and control community had an international reputation.
Today DYSCO is recognized on the international scene as one of the strongest groupings in systems and control in the world; these are the words of the international experts who have evaluated our IAP network. The leaders of our field come and visit us, they spend sabbaticals here, they come and teach in our Graduate School, they send us their post-docs and take our PhD graduates for post-docs. The King's visit was an opportunity to reflect on these achievements and on the way our collaborative work has enabled us to get there, as a result of the IAP programme.

In closing, I would like to thank you all, members of the DYSCO network, for your enthusiasm in the events we organize, and in particular the promotors who form such a great team. I would particularly like to thank the people who have worked enormously and on very short notice to make the October 1 event the success it was: the four speakers, the local team at CESAME, and in particular our administrative assistant Nathalie Ponet, who masterminded just about every aspect of this visit, great and small, and allowed me to remain focused on the main objectives of this special event.

Michel Gevers
DYSCO coordinator

Staff Movements and Visitors

KUL 1
  • These PhD students joined us on October 1st:
    • Kim Batselier, promotor B. De Moor
    • Maarten Breckpot, promotor B. De Moor
    • Rodrigo Moraes, promotor M. Moonen
  • Our visitors :
    • 01/10/09 - 30/11/09 : Maxim Komarov, Tatiana Levanova and Grigory Osipov (J. Suykens)
    • 15/10/09 - 14/11/09 : Valentin Petrov (J. Suykens)
    • 15/10/09 - 14/12/09 : Evgeny Pavlov (J. Suykens)
UGent-SYSTeMS
  • Professor Aldemar Munőz is visiting the SYSTeMS Research Group from September 15 till December 1st. He is a professor at the University of Tolima, Colombia. He received a South - North Specialisation Scholarship from VLir - Uos to conduct research activities in the field of modelling and control of biofuels production.
VUB-ELEC
  • Miroslav Zivanovic, Universidad Publica de Navarra - Dpt. Telecommunicaciones, Pamplona, Spain : from 28/9/2009 until 31/1/2010.
  • Laszlo Balogh and Istvan Kollar, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Measurement and Information Systems, Hungary stayed with us respectively from 5/10/2009 until 10/10/2009 and from 9/10/2009 until 10/10/2009.
ULB
  • Tomasz Konopka joined the team of Marianne Rooman for a one-year postdoctoral stay on October 1.
FPMs
  • On June 30, Edmundo Rocha (UNAM, Mexico) left the Control lab, after a one-year research stay.
  • On September 30, Daniel Coutinho (PUCRS, Porto Alegre) left the Control group, after a one-year research stay.
  • Lino Santos (University of Coimbra) will stay from September 20 to December 20 in the Control Lab to work with Alain Vande Wouwer and his group.
  • Pedro Almeida (PhD student) joined the group on October 1.

Theses Defences

VUB-ELEC

Laszlo Balogh, Model Fitting in Frequency Domain Imposing Stability of the Model, Friday October 9, 16:00, Promotiezaal, D.2.01, Building D, 2nd floor.

Seminars

UCL
  • October 13, 2009 - 14:00 - Euler Building
    Richard Braatz (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Robust Optimal Control of Finite-time Distributed Parameter Systems.
  • October 20, 2009 - 14:00 - Euler Building
    Jan Maciejowski (University of Cambridge), Fault-tolerant control - is it possible?
  • October 27, 2009 - 14:00 - Euler Building
    John Lee (Unité d'imagerie moléculaire et radiothérapie expérimentale, UCL), Dimensionality reduction: from PCA to recent nonlinear techniques.
  • October 30, 2009 - 11:00 - Euler Building
    Mason Porter (Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, University of Oxford), Communities in Networks.
  • November 3, 2009 - 14:00 - Euler Building
    Christophe De Vleeschouwer (TELE, UCL), Multi-sensored vision for autonomous production of personalized video summaries.
KUL 1
  • October 15, 2009 – 16:00 (ESAT 01.57) : K.U.Leuven Seminars on Optimization in Engineering : Richard Braatz (Millennium Chair, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US), http://brahms.scs.uiuc.edu, Robust Optimal Control of Finite-time Distributed Parameter Systems.
  • October 22, 2009 – 16:00 (ESAT 00.62) : SISTA Seminar : Peter Karsmakers (K.U. Leuven, ESAT-SCD), Large-Scale Kernel Logistic Regression for Speech Recognition.

Papers produced by the IAP Network

UCL

Aguilar E., Dochain D., Alcaraz-Gonzalez V., Gonzalez-Alvarez V., A multivariable control scheme in a two-stage anaerobic digestion system described by partial differential equations, Journal of Process Control, 19, (2009), 2009, p. 1324-1332.

Traag V. A., Bruggeman J., Community detection in networks with positive and negative links, Phys. Rev. E 80, 036115 (2009).

Samir C., Van Dooren P., Laurent D., Gallivan K. A., Absil P.-A., Elastic morphing of 2D and 3D objects on a shape manifold, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 5627/2009, pp. 563-572, 2009.

Samir C., Absil P.-A., Srivastava A., Klassen E., Fitting Curves on Riemannian Manifolds Using Energy Minimization, MVA2009 IAPR Conference on Machine Vision Applications, May 20-22, 2009, Yokohama, Japan.

KUL 1

Van den Broeck R., Van Dierdonck J., Caerts B., Kregersman B., Nijskens P., Dotremont C., Van Impe J.F., Smets I.Y., The impact of the ratio of (monovalent/polyvalent) cations in the influent on bioflocculation in membrane bioreactors, Proceedings of the 1st IWA BeNeLux Regional Young Water Professionals Conference, Eindhoven (Nederland), September 30 - October 2, 2009, 6 p., Accepted for oral presentation.

Logist F., Huyck B., Fabré M., Verwerft M., Pluymers B., De Brabanter J., De Moor B., Van Impe J., Identification and control of a pilot scale binary distillation column, Proceedings of the European Control Conference, Budapest (Hungary), August 23-26, 2009, pp. 4659-4664.

Van den Broeck R., Van Dierdonck J., Caerts B., Bisson I., Kregersman B., Nijskens P., Dotremont C., Van Impe J.F., Smets I.Y., The impact of (synthetic) influents on bioflocculation in membrane bioreactors, Proceedings of the IWA Membrane Technology Conference & Exhibition 2009, Beijing (China), September 1-3, 2009, 6 p.

Karsmakers P., Pelckmans K., Van hamme H., Suykens J.A.K, Large-Scale Kernel Logistic Regression for Segment-Based Phoneme Recognition, Internal Report 09-174, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009, Lirias number: 243250.

Barjas Blanco T., Willems P., Po-Kuan Chiang P., De Moor B., Berlamont J., Flood Regulation using Model Predictive Control, Internal Report 09-175, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009, Lirias number: 243215.

Le Nir V., van Waterschoot T., Duplicy J., Moonen M., Blind coarse timing offset estimation for CP-OFDM and ZP-OFDM transmission over frequency selective channels, Internal Report 09-176, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009, Lirias number: 243215.

Bertrand A., Moonen M., Distributed adaptive node-specific signal estimation in fully connected sensor networks - Part II: simultaneous updates, Internal Report 09-178, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009, Lirias number: 243215.

Lopez J., Suykens J.A.K., First and Second Order SMO Algorithms for Large Scale LS-SVM Training, Internal Report 09-179, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009., Lirias number: 243215.

Sorensen M., De Lathauwer L., Deneire L., PARAFAC with Orthogonality in One Mode and Applications in DS-CDMA Systems, Internal Report 09-181, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009, Lirias number: 243215.

Cornelis B., Moonen M., Wouters J., A QRD-RLS based frequency domain multichannel Wiener filter algorithm for noise reduction in hearing aids, Internal Report 09-184, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009, Lirias number: 243215.

Ngo K., van Waterschoot T., Christensen M.G., Moonen M., Jensen S.H., Wouters J., Adaptive Feedback Cancellation in Hearing Aids using a Sinusoidal near-end Signal Model, Internal Report 09-185, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009, Lirias number: 243215.

Bertrand A., Moonen M., Energy-based multi-speaker voice activity detection with an ad-hoc microphone array, Internal Report 09-186, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009, Lirias number: 243215.

Dreesen P., De Moor B., Polynomial Optimization Problems are Eigenvalue Problems, in Chapter 4 of Model-Based Control - Bridging Rigorous Theory and Advanced Technology, (Van den Hof P.M.J., Scherer C., and Heuberger P.S.C., eds.), Springer, 2009, pp. 49-68, Lirias number: 243215.

Combaz A., Manyakov N.V., Chumerin N., Suykens J.A.K., Van Hulle M.M., Classification of EEG Signals for Rapid P300 Mind Spelling Based on Feature Extraction, Internal Report 09-198, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009. Accepted for publication in Eighth International Conference on Machine Learning and Applications (ICMLA 2009), Lirias number: 243215.

Giacobello D., et al. Moonen M., Retrieving sparse patterns using a compressed sensing framework : Applications to speech coding based on sparse linear prediction, Internal Report 09-201, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009. Accepted for publication in IEEE Signal Processing Letters, Lirias number: 243215.

Mendez O., Corthout J., Van Huffel S., Matteucci M., Penzel T., Cerutti S., Bianchi A.M., Automatic screening of obstructive sleep apnea from the ECG based on empirical mode decomposition and wavelet analysis, Internal Report 09-202, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2009, Lirias number: 243215.

VUB-ELEC

Antoni J., Schoukens J., Optimal Settings for Measuring Frequency Response Functions with Weighted Overlapped Segment Averaging, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 58, No. 9, September 2009, pp 3276-3287.

Gommé L., Rolain Y., Schoukens J., Pintelon R., Time domain model validation of a nonlinear block-oriented structure, Measurement Science and Technology, 20 (2009) 105106 (9pp).

Barbé K., Van Moer W., Rolain Y., Using ANOVA in a Microwave Round-Robin Comparison, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 58, No. 10, October 2009, pp. 3490-3498.

Pintelon R., Peeters B., Guillaume P., Continuous-time operational modal analysis in the presence of harmonic disturbances - The multivariate case, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing Vol. 24, No. 1 (2010) 90-105.

El-Barkouky M., Vandersteen G., Wambacq P., Rolain Y., Overtone-Based Oscillator, European Microwave Week 2009, Rome, Italy, 28 September - 2 October, 2009.

KUL 2

Bultheel A., Lasarow A., On the existence of para-orthogonal rational functions on the unit circle, Analysis, 2009.

Bultheel A., Cruz Barroso R., Van Barel M., On Gauss-type quadrature formulas with prescribed nodes anywhere on the real line, Calcolo, accepted, 2009.

Huybrechs D., Stable high-order quadrature rules with equidistant points, Journal of computational and applied mathematics, 231(2), 933-947, 2009.

Honnor M., Trevelyan J., Huybrechs D., Numerical evaluation of 2D partition of unity boundary integrals for Helmholtz problems, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 2009.

Ghysels P., Samaey G., Tijskens E., Van Liedekerke P., Ramon H., Roose D., Multi-scale simulation of plant tissue deformation using a model for individual cell mechanics, Physical Biology, 6(1), 2009.

Frederix K., Gemignani L., Van Barel M., On the fast reduction of symmetric rationally generated Toeplitz matrices to tridiagonal form, Electronic Transactions on Numerical Analysis, accepted, 2009.

De Schutter J., Diehl M., Glineur F., Jarlebring E., Louveaux Q., Michiels W., Smets I., Suykens J., Swevers J., Vandewalle J., Van Impe J., Verschuure M. (Eds.), Book of Abstracts of the 14th Belgian-French-German Conference on Optimization, Leuven: Print-service.

Niculescu S., Michiels W., Gu K., Abdallah C., Delay effects on output feedback control of dynamical systems, In: Atay F. (Eds.), Complex time-delay systems, pp. 261-284, Berlin: Springer Verlag, 2009.

Huybrechs D., Olver S., Highly oscillatory quadrature, In: Engquist B., Fokas T., Hairer E., Iserles A. (Eds.), Highly Oscillatory Problems, pp. 25-50, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Huybrechs D., Olver S., Rapid function approximation by modified Fourier series, In: Engquist B., Fokas T., Hairer E., Iserles A. (Eds.), Highly Oscillatory Problems, pp. 51-71, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Rama Rao M., Vandewalle S., De Munck M., Moens D., Dynamic analysis of a cable-stayed bridge with uncertain structural parameters, In : Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Structural Safety and Reliability ICOSSAR 2009, Osaka, Japan, 14-18 September 2009.

Asheim A., Huybrechs D., The computation of local solutions to high frequency scattering problems, In : Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Mathematical and Numerical Aspects of Waves Propagation, Pau, France, 15-19 June 2009, Barucq H. (Ed), pp. 216-217.

Corveleyn S., Vandewalle S., Component reuse in iterative solvers for the solution of fuzzy partial differential equations, International Conference of Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics, Greece, 18-22 September 2009.

Matton M., Van Compernolle D., Cools R., Minimum classification error training in example based speech and pattern recognition using sparse weight matrices, TW Reports, TW548, 12 p., Leuven, Belgium: Department of Computer Science, K.U.Leuven, 2009.

Lasarow A., On maximal weight solutions in a truncated trigonometric matrix moment problem, TW Reports, TW547, 9 p., Leuven, Belgium: Department of Computer Science, K.U.Leuven, 2009.

Speleers H., A normalized basis for reduced Clough-Tocher splines, TW Reports, TW546, 15 p., Leuven, Belgium: Department of Computer Science, K.U.Leuven, 2009.

Cools R., Nuyens D., Extensions of Fibonacci lattice rules, TW Reports, TW545, 12 p. Leuven, Belgium: Department of Computer Science, K.U.Leuven, 2009.

Rosseel E., De Gersem H., Vandewalle S., ''Nonlinear stochastic Galerkin and collocation methods: application to a ferromagnetic cylinder rotating at high speed'', TW Reports, TW541, 21 p. Leuven, Belgium: Department of Computer Science, K.U.Leuven, 2009.

Vandereycken B., Vandewalle S., A Riemannian optimization approach for computing low-rank solutions of Lyapunov equations, TW Reports, TW544, 26 p. Leuven, Belgium: Department of Computer Science, K.U.Leuven, 2009.

Vanherpe L., Wendler F., Nestler B., Vandewalle S., A multigrid solver for phase field simulation of microstructure evolution, TW Reports, TW542, 18 p. Leuven, Belgium: Department of Computer Science, K.U.Leuven, 2009.

Schumaker L., Speleers H., Nonnegativity preserving macro-element interpolation of scattered data, TW Reports, TW543, 24 p., Leuven, Belgium: Department of Computer Science, K.U.Leuven, 2009.

Huybrechs D., Iserles A., Norsett S., From high oscillation to rapid approximation V: The equilateral triangle, Cambridge NA Reports, nr. NA2009/04, 2009.

Matton M., Cools R. (adv.), Van Compernolle D. (adv.), Distance Measures for Template Based Speech and Pattern Recognition, (Afstandsmaten voor voorbeeldgebaseerde spraak- en patroonherkenning), 2009.

Van Aerschot W., Bultheel A. (adv.), Jansen M. (adv.), Multiscale Geometric Image Approximation (Multischaal benadering van geometrische beelden), 155 p., 2009.

FPMs

Dewasme L., Bogaerts Ph., Vande Wouwer A., Monitoring of Bioprocesses: Mechanistic and Data-driven Approaches, in the Series Studies in Computational Intelligence, (Computational Intelligent Techniques for Bioprocess Modelling, Supervision and Control, Maria do Carmo Nicoletti, Lakhmi C. Jain, eds.), Springer-Verlag, 2009.

Goffaux G., Vande Wouwer A., Design of a Robust Nonlinear Receding-Horizon Observer - First-order and second-order approximations, in the Series Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences (Assessment and future directions of nonlinear model predictive control, L. Magni, D. Raimundo, F. Allgoëwer, eds), Springer Verlag, 2009.

Saucez P., Some L., Vande Wouwer A., Matlab Implementation of a Moving grid Algorithm based on the Equidistribution Principle, Applied Mathematics and Computation (2009), in press.

Logist F., Saucez P., Van Impe J., Vande Wouwer A., Simulation of (Bio)chemical Processes with Distributed Parameters using Matlab, Chemical Engineering Journal (2009), in press.

Drugman T., Dubuisson T., Dutoit T., On the mutual information between source and filter contributions for voice pathology detection, Proceedings of Interspeech 2009, 2009.

Dubuisson T., Drugman T., Dutoit T., On the mutual information of glottal source estimation techniques for the automatic detection of speech pathologies, Proceedings of MAVEBA 09, 2009.

Graduate School in Systems, Optimization, Control and Network.

To read this year's programme, please visit the Graduate School web site.

You can register electronically by filling in this form.

Study Days, Workshops and Summer Schools

The next study day of our DYSCO network will take place on 27 November in Leuven. It will be organized by the KUL2 team of Dirk Roose. All details will be provided soon.

Job vacancies

  • Faculty positions are available at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. One of these is a position in Dynamics & Control, in particular control and optimization of dynamical systems, with possible application to mechatronic and robotic systems. In principle, these positions are at the tenure-track assistant-professor level, although exceptionally well-qualified candidates may be considered at a more senior level. Advertisements for these positions can be found here.

For information, please contact Professor Dominique Bonvin (dominique.bonvin@epfl.ch).

Call for papers

Subject and Scope :

The IFAC NOLCOS Symposium is a continuing series of symposia that were previously held in Capri (I) 1988, Bordeaux (F) 1992, Lake Tahoe (USA) 1995, Enschede (NL) 1998, Saint-Petersburg (RUS) 2001, Stuttgart (DE) 2004, and Pretoria (ZA) 2007.
Acknowledged as the major international gathering of leading experts in industry and academia in the field of nonlinear control, NOLCOS aims at strengthening contacts between academia and industry to build up new networks and cultivate existing relations. High-level speakers will present the global spectrum of nonlinear control systems, state-of-the-art applications and developing directions. NOLCOS 2010 is also meant as a forum for young scientists from all over the world. They will be given the opportunity to introduce their research ambitions and scientific work to an audience of international experts. Tutorial workshops are planned prior to the conference with the focus on special topics in nonlinear control systems.

Important Dates :

Deadline for full paper submission: January 15, 2010 (Submission website is open at www.ifac.papercept.net)
Notification of accepted papers: March 30, 2010
Submission of accepted final papers: May 15, 2010

Paper Submission :

Papers must be submitted through the conference submission website (www.ifac.papercept.net) and should be prepared in accordance with the IFAC-Elsevier style (style files are available on the symposium home-page). For the purpose of review only, manuscripts may be up to eight (8) pages long. However, normal length for the final manuscript is limited to six (6) pages. Acceptable file format is PDF.

Invited Sessions :

NOLCOS 2010 solicits invited session proposals. The invited sessions are intended to stimulate in-depth discussions in special areas relevant to the symposium theme. Please contact the IPC chair if you would like to organize an invited session. Instruction for organizing an invited session can be found at the symposium home-page.

Tutorials :

Three parallel tutorials, of 6 hours each, will be organized on August 31 by the three plenary speakers on the topics of their plenary talks, namely discontinuous nonlinear feedback, nonlinear feedback for bipedal robot walking, and consensus and coordination in nonlinear spaces. The objective of the tutorials is to introduce the participants with basic facts and notions of the specific topic and to fix the background for the plenary talks where advances and future trends in the field will be presented. More information at the symposium website.

The 19th International Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems (MTNS 2010) will take place at ELTE – University Congress Center, in Budapest, Hungary, between 5-9 July 2010. The Symposium is hosted by the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) and MTA SZTAKI (Computer and Automation Research Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences).

MTNS 2010 is a prime conference in the general area of mathematical system theory. The symposium is interdisciplinary and attracts mathematicians, engineers and researchers working in any aspect of system theory and its applications. A prime objective of the MTNS 2010 Symposium is to explore and present mathematics as a key technology for the 21st century.

The scientific programme of the conference is defined by approximately 80 themes, listed on the web-page of the conference, and grouped into the following 12 main areas: Biological Systems, Communication Systems, Computing, Control and Systems Theory, Cooperative Systems, Economics and Systems Theory, Hybrid Systems, Mechanical Systems, Networked Control, Signal Processing, Stochastic Systems, Systems Inspired Mathematics.

For further information (submission details, deadlines, etc), please visit the conference web site: www.conferences.hu/mtns2010

IAP Contact Persons

UCL-INMAIsabelle Hisette
KUL 1Ida Tassens, Kristel Bernaerts
UGent-SYSTeMSMargot Roels
VUB-ELECAnn Pintelon
KUL 2Wim Michiels, Jan Swevers
ULg-SYSTRodolphe Sepulchre
ULBMichel Kinnaert
FPMsAlain Vande Wouwer

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