Message of the Coordinator

We just had a very successful study day at KULeuven. Dirk Roose and Joos Vandewalle, had decided to organize it in the historical building of the "Thermotechnisch Instituut", and came up with a solid scientific program that attracted more than 160 attendees. The plenary lectures of Larry Biegler, Julien Hendrickx and Henk Nijmeijer were all three very inspiring and beautifully presented. The poster session was very lively and had been set up in the historical hall of the building. The closing session was a reflection of the past IAP programmes, presented by Michel Gevers. This gave us the opportunity to thank him again for his leadership and years of devotion to this research program, which had such a big impact on the careers of many of us. I wish to thank here all these people for contributing to the success of this meeting and especially Margot Peeters and Koen Poppe, who were responsible for the local arrangements.

This time of the year is a time for celebrations and we have two good reasons to do this. Johan Suykens just received an ERC Advanced Grant, which are known to be very competitive, and Yurii Nesterov was awarded the Francqui Chair 2011-2012 by the University of Liège, where he will present a lecture series on Complexity and Simplicity of Optimization Problems. My warmest congratulations to both of them for these well deserved honours.

I use this opportunity to already wish you the best for 2012 and let us hope this will include a renewal of our IAP programme.
Merry Christmas !

Paul Van Dooren
DYSCO coordinator

Staff Movements and Visitors

UCL
  • Djillali Bouagada (University of Mostaganem, Algeria), November 25 - December 7. Host : P. Van Dooren.
  • Prof. Ernesto Estrada (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK), December 1 - 9. Host : V. Blondel.
  • Martin Rosvall (Umea University, Sweden), December 6 - 9. Host : V. Blondel.
  • Alessandro D'Innocenzo (University of L’Aquila, Italy), December 5 - 7. Host : R. Jungers.
  • Gongyun Zhao (National University of Singapore) will visit us from 8 to 22 December. He is invited by P-A. Absil and he will work on the topic "Differential geometry and dynamical systems in linear programming".
  • Wei Dai (Imperial College, London, UK), December 19 - 21. He will work with P-A. Absil and Nicolas Boumal.
UGent-SYSTeMS
  • From January 2012 to December 2015, ir Andres HERNANDEZ will perform research towards his doctoral degree, within the IWT-SBO project ORCNext: The next generation Organic Rankine Cycles. His promoter will be Prof Robin De Keyser.

Seminars

UCL
  • December 2, 2011 - 11:00 - Euler seminar room
    Ernesto ESTRADA (University of Strathclyde), Communicability in complex networks.
  • December 6, 2011 - 14:00 - Euler seminar room
    Alessandro D'INNOCENZO (University of L'Aquila), Modeling, analysis and design of multi-hop control networks.
  • December 8, 2011 - 11:00 - Euler seminar room
    Martin ROSVAL (Umeå University, Department of Physics, Sweden), title to be announced.
  • December 13, 2011 - 14:00 - Euler seminar room
    Thibault GIARD (UCL), Adaptive control of grip force to compensate for static and dynamic torques during object manipulation.
  • December 16, 2011 - 11:00 - Euler seminar room
    Bivas MITRA (UCL), Intrinsically Dynamic Network Communities.
  • December 20, 2011 - 14:00 - Euler seminar room
    Wei DAI (Imperial College London, UK), A Geometric Approach for Sparse Signal Processing: Algorithms and Performance Guarantees.
  • December 21, 2011 - 11:00 - Euler seminar room
    Niloy GANGULY (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur), Alphabetic bipartite networks: Theory and Applications.
KUL 1
  • December 21, 2011 - 15:30 - Aula van de tweede hoofdwet : SISTA Seminar
    Stefan Debener (University of Oldenburg, Germany), Benefits and pitfalls of EEG-informed fMRI analysis
ULg-SYST

Systmod weekly seminars normally take place on each Friday, 11am. They are announced on this webpage.

  • December 9, 2011 - 14:00 - Room R7, Montefiore Institute (B28)
    Kai Heussen (Technical University of Denmark), Functional Modeling for Control Structure Design - With Applications to Future Power Systems.
  • December 9, 2011 - 11:00 - Room R7, Montefiore Institute (B28)
    Roberto Tron (Johns Hopkins University), Riemannian Consensus and Camera Sensor Networks.

Theses defenses

UCL

Jeremy Badler will defend his thesis entitled "Heuristics in the brain: using time and causality information to generate predictive movements" on December 7, 2011 at 17:00 in the Auditoire de Visscher, Woluwé. His promotors are Professors Marcus Missal and Philippe Lefèvre.

KUL 1

December 8, 2011 - 14:00 - Auditorium "Oude Molen", Kasteelpark Arenberg 50, Heverlee
Bram Cornelis (K.U.Leuven, ESAT-SCD) : Design and evaluation of noise reduction techniques for binaural hearing aids (Promotors: Prof. M. Moonen, Prof. J. Wouters)

December 21, 2011 - 17:00 - Aula van de tweede hoofdwet
Katrien Vanderperren (K.U.Leuven, ESAT-SCD) : Improving data-driven EEG-fMRI analyses for the study of cognitive functioning (Promotor: Prof. S. Van Huffel)

VUB-ELEC

Wim Foubert, Design and evaluation of channel models for DSL applications, Doctoral Dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, November 2011 (promoters Leo Van Biesen and Yves Rolain)

Papers produced by the IAP Network

UCL

A. Rapaport, D. Dochain, ''Minimal Time Control of Fed-Batch Processes With Growth Functions Having Several Maxima', IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, Vol. 56, No. 11, November 2011, pp 2671-2676.

V. Blondel, P. Deville, F. Morlot, Z. Smoreda, P. Van Dooren, C. Ziemlicki, Le téléphone portable redistribue-t-il les cartes ?, ParisTech Review, November 2011, 8 p.

D. Dochain, M. Perrier, M. Guay, Extremum seeking control and its application to process and reaction systems: A survey, Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, 82 (2011), pp. 369–380.

R. M. Jungers, The synchronizing probability function of an automaton, to appear in the SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics.

A. A. Ahmadi, R. M. Jungers, P. A. Parrilo, M. Roozbehani, Analysis of the Joint Spectral Radius via Lyapunov Functions on Path-Complete Graphs, submitted, 2011.

V. Protasov, R. M. Jungers, Convex optimization methods for computing the Lyapunov exponent of matrices, submitted, 2011.

R. M. Jungers, On asymptotic properties of matrix semigroups with an invariant cone, submitted, 2011.

M. Gevers, P. Hagg, H. Hjalmarsson, R. Pintelon, J. Schoukens, The Transient Impulse Response Modeling Method and the Local Polynomial Method for nonparametric system identification, submitted for presentation at the 16th IFAC Symposium on System Identification, Brussels, July 2012.

L. Campestrini, D. Eckhard, A. S. Bazanella, M. Gevers, Model Reference Control Design by Prediction Error Identification, submitted for presentation at the 16th IFAC Symposium on System Identification, Brussels, July 2012.

D. Eckhard, H. Hjalmarsson, C. R. Rojas, M. Gevers, Mean-squared error experiment design for linear regression models, submitted for presentation at the 16th IFAC Symposium on System Identification, Brussels, July 2012.

P. Frasca, J. Hendrickx, On the mean square error of randomized averaging algorithms, submitted to Automatica.

KUL 1

Draulans V., Van Huffel S., Gezocht : m/v-student wetenschappen of ingenieur : over gender-beleid en gender-diversiteit, in Duizend bloemen en granaten : Over gender en technologie, (Deblonde M., ed.), ACCO (Leuven, België), 2011, pp. 139-156.

Ferreau H.J., Model predictive control algorithms for applications with millisecond timescales, PhD thesis, Faculty of Engineering, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), Oct. 2011, 186 p.

De Lathauwer L., Block Component Analysis, a New Concept for Blind Source Separation, Internal Report 11-196, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2011.

Bertrand A., Applications and trends in wireless acoustic sensor networks: a signal processing perspective, in Proc. of the IEEE Symposium on Communications and Vehicular Technology (SCVT), Ghent, Belgium, Nov. 2011.

Breckpot M., Agudelo M., De Moor B., Modelling of a river system with multiple reaches, Internal Report 11-198, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2011.

Batselier K., Dreesen P., De Moor B., Global Optimization and Prediction Error Methods, Internal Report 11-199, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2011.

Marconato A., Sjoberg J., Suykens J.A.K., Schoukens J., Separate Initialization of Dynamics and Nonlinearities in Nonlinear State-Space Models, Internal Report 11-203, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2011.

Marconato A., Sjoberg J., Suykens J.A.K., Schoukens J., Identification of the Silverbox Benchmark using Nonlinear State-Space Models, Internal Report 11-204, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2011.

Mehrkanoon S., Suykens J.A.K., LS-SVM approximate solution to linear time varying descriptor systems, Internal Report 11-205, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2011.

van Waterschoot T., Diehl M., Moonen M., Leus G., Identification of black-box wave propagation models using large-scale convex optimization, Internal Report 11-209, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2011.

Van Huffel S., Correia C., Fred A., Gamboa H. (eds.), Proceedings of Bio-inspired systems and signal processing, in Proc. of the 5th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (BIOSTEC 2012), Algarve, Portugal, Feb. 2012.

Signoretto M., Suykens J., Convex Estimation of Cointegrated VAR Models by a Nuclear Norm Penalty, Internal Report 11-213, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2011.

Li Y., Sima D., Van Cauter S., Himmelreich U., Pi Y., Van Huffel S., Simulation study of tissue type differentation using non-negative matrix factorization, in Proc. of the International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing (BIOSIGNALS 2012), Vilamoura, Portugal, Feb. 2012.

Li Y., Sima D., Van Cauter S., Himmelreich U., Pi Y., Van Huffel S., Tissue type differentiation for brain glioma using non-negative matrix factorization, in Proc. of the International Conference on Bio-inspired Systems and Signal Processing (BIOSIGNALS 2012), Vilamoura, Portugal, Feb. 2012, 8 p.

Hunyadi B., Signoretto M., Van Huffel S., Suykens J.A.K., De Vos M., ``Incorporating structural information from the multichannel EEG improves patient-specific seizure detection'', Internal Report 11-220, ESAT-SISTA, K.U.Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2011.

UGent-SYSTeMS

De Keyser R., Ionescu C., Adaptive control of an artificial ventilator for a COPD patient, Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine 104, (2011), pp. e178-e188, DOI information: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2011.03.001

Ionescu C., Machado J.T.,De Keyser R., Is multidimensional scaling suitable for mappen the input respiratory impedance in subjects and patients ?, in the Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 104, (2011), pp. e189-e200, DOI: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2011.02.009

Ionescu C., Muntean I., De Keyser R., The influence of asymmetric space filling in the human lung, Acta Universitatis Apulensis, Special Issue on Understanding Complex Systems, (Eds): B. Iantovics, L. Hluchy, R. Kountchev, ISSN 1582-5329, pp. 28-36, 2011

Ionescu C. (Ed.), Matlab: an ubiquitous tool for the practical engineer, In-Tech (open access), ISBN 978-953-307-315-6, www.intech.com, (2011)

Ionescu C, Schoukens J., De Keyser R., Detecting and analyzing non-linear effects in respiratory impedance measurements, American Control Conference, June 29 - July 1st, San Francisco, USA, 978-1-4577-0079-8, pp. 5412-5417, 2011 (citer ISI Proceedings)

Pop C., Dulf E., De Keyser R., Ionescu C., Muresan B., Festila Cl., Predictive control of the multivariabel time delay processes in an isotope separation column, 6th IEEE Int Symp on Applied Computational Intelligence and Informatics (SACI11), Timisoara, Romania, pp 29-34, 2011 (cited ISI Proceedings)

Ionescu C., Hernandez A., Chirita M., De Keyser R., Assessment of the airway alterations by means of a fractal ladder network model, invited for Special Session on Fractional order systems, organized at the IFAC World Congress, Aug. 28 - Sept. 2, 2011, Milan, Italy, pp. 13966-13971.

Neamtu C., Fabregas E., Wyns B., De Keyser R., Dormido S., Ionescu C., A remote laboratory for mobile robot applications, invited for Special Session on Remote Laboratory Applications, organized at the IFAC World Congress, Aug. 28 - Sept. 2, 2011, Milan, Italy, pp. 7280-7285.

Ionescu C., Nascu I. De Keyser R., Robustness tests of a model based predictive control strategy for dept of anesthesia regulation in a propofol to bispectral index framework, in IFMBE Proc. of International Conference on Advancements of Medicine and Health Care through Technology (Meditech), Cluj, Romania, Aug. 28 - Sept. 2, 2011, IFMBE Proceedings vol 36, pp. 234-239 (citer ISI Proceedings)

Cochior C., De Keyser R., Lazar C., An Anti-Slip Predictive Controller for a V-PRA vehicle, in Proc. of the IFAC World Congress, Aug. 28 - Sept. 2, 2011, Milan, Italy, pp. 8415-8420.

Plaza Guingla D., De Keyser R., Pauwels V., From the Ensemble Kalman Filter to the Particle Filter: a comparative study in rainfall-runoff models, in Proc. of the IFAC World Congress, to be held Aug. 28 - Sept. 2, 2011, Milan, Italy, pp. 14201-14206

Sabin D., De Keyser R., WinCC® Application via OPC Communication to MatLabR for Integrated Systems, in Proc. Of the ETFA'2011 - IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technology & Factory Automation, Toulouse, France, September 5-9, 2011.

VUB-ELEC

M. Schoukens, R. Pintelon, Y. Rolain, Parametric Identification of Parallel Hammerstein Systems, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 60, No. 12, 2011, pp. 3933–3938.

K. Tiels, J. Schoukens, Identifying a Wiener system using a variant of the Wiener G-Functionals, 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference (CDC-ECC11), Orlando, FL, USA, December 12-15, 2011.

L. Vanbeylen, A. Van Mulders, J. Schoukens, A state-space view on locally-stable, globally-unstable nonlinear models driven by Gaussian burst inputs, 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference (CDC-ECC11), Orlando, FL, USA, December 12-15, 2011.

J. Schoukens, Y. Rolain, G. Vandersteen, R. Pintelon, User friendly Box-Jenkins identification using nonparametric noise models, 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference (CDC-ECC11), Orlando, FL, USA, December 12-15, 2011.

M. Schoukens, Y. Rolain, Parametric MIMO parallel Wiener Identification, 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference (CDC-ECC11), Orlando, FL, USA, December 12-15, 2011.

J. Schoukens, G. Vandersteen, M. Gevers, R. Pintelon and Y. Rolain, User choices for nonparametric preprocessing in system identification, submitted for presentation at the 16th IFAC Symposium on System Identification, Brussels, July 2012.

KUL 2

Poppe, Koen; Cools, Ronald; De Laet, Tinne; Bruyninckx, Herman, On quasi-Monte Carlo techniques in particle filters for robotics, Applied Mathematical and Computational Sciences, volume 3, issue 3, pages 261-274, 2012.

Adcock, Ben; Huybrechs, Daan, Accuracy of the Fourier extension method for oscillatory phenomena, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on the Mathematical and Numerical Aspects of Waves, pages 289-292, Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences.

Boettcher, Albrecht; Grudsky, Sergei; Iserles, Arieh; Huybrechs, Daan, First-order trace formulas for the iterates of the Fox-Li operator, Integral Equations and Operator Theory, 2011 (Accepted).

Bultheel, Adhemar, Book review "Voltaire's Riddle. Micromégas and the measure of all things"by A.J. Simoson, BMS-NCM News, Belgian Mathematical Society, November 2011.

Chesnokov, Andrey, Eigenvalues, Orthogonal Functions and Structured Matrices, PhD thesis, Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics Section, Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering, November 2011, Van Barel, Marc (supervisor).

Huybrechs, Daan, Superinterpolation in highly oscillatory quadrature, Hairer, Ernst; Hochbruck, Marlis; Iserles, Arieh; Lubich, Christian (eds.), Geometric Numerical Integration, Oberwolfach, 20-26 March 2011, Oberwolfach Reports, volume 8, issue 1, pages 826-829, European Mathematical Society.

Huybrechs, Daan; Olver, Sheehan, Superinterpolation in highly oscillatory quadrature, Foundations of Computational Mathematics, 2011 (Accepted).

Jarlebring, Elias; Damm, Tobias; Michiels, Wim, Model reduction of time-delay systems using position balancing and delay Lyapunov equations, Mathematics of Control, Signals and Systems, 2011 (Submitted).

Levrie, Paul, Lost and Found: An Unpublished zeta(2)-Proof, The Mathematical Intelligencer, volume 33, issue 2, pages 29-32, 2011.

Michiels, Wim; Jarlebring, Elias; Meerbergen, Karl, A projection approach for model reduction of large-scale time-delay systems, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, Orlando, USA, 12-15 December 2011, Proceedings of the 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, pages 1-8.

Michiels, Wim; Verriest, Erik, A systems theoretic framework of fast varying and state dependent delays, IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, Orlando, USA, 12-15 December 2011, Proceedings of the 50th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control and European Control Conference, pages 1-6.

Nicolai, Bart; Egea, Jose; Scheerlinck, Nico; Banga, JR; Datta, AK, Fuzzy finite element analysis of heat conduction problems with uncertain parameters, Journal of Food Engineering, volume 103, issue 1, pages 38-46, 2011.

Steur, Erik; Michiels, Wim; Huijberts, Henri; Nijmeijer, Henk, Networks of diffusively time-delay coupled systems: Synchronization and its relation to the network topology, Physica D, Nonlinear Phenomena, 2011 (Submitted).

Van Beeumen, Roel; Van Nimmen, Katrien; Lombaert, Geert; Meerbergen, Karl, Model reduction for dynamical systems with quadratic output, International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering, 2011 (Accepted).

Graduate School in Systems, Optimization, Control and Networks

The SOCN Graduate School 2011-2012 programme is available on-line : http://sites.uclouvain.be/socn/

The next course is entitled Mathematics of PDE constrained optimization. It will be given by Michael HINZE (University of Hamburg, Germany) on February 20, 22, 24, 27, 28, 29, 2012 at K.U.Leuven (9:00-12:30) (ESAT, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, B-3001 Heverlee (Leuven) - room 00.62 except on February 20 : room ESAT 02.58).

More information about this course : http://sites.uclouvain.be/socn/Courses/Courses2011-3

On-line registrations are welcome via this form.

Study Days, Workshops and Summer Schools

Francqui chair awarded by ULg to Yurii Nesterov

Complexity and Simplicity of Optimization Problems

Public lecture: February 17, 2012 15h, Salle Académique, Liège

There will be a workshop organized in the morning in the Salle académique.
Speakers: Etienne De Klerk (Tilburg), Alexandre d'Aspremont (Paris), Michel Baes (ETH Zürich).

The five main lectures will be held every Friday from February 24 to March 23.

The participation is free to every event, but the registration is mandatory.
More information on http://www.montefiore.ulg.ac.be/~francqui

Vacancies

The research group K.U. Leuven ESAT-SCD is currently offering new PhD positions (4-years of PhD study) and Postdoc positions (1 year, extendable) within the framework of the ERC Advanced Grant A-DATADRIVE-B (PI: Johan Suykens).

Different research positions (PhD/postdoc) are oriented towards

-1- Prior knowledge incorporation
-2- Kernels and tensors
-3- Modelling structured dynamical systems
-4- Sparsity
-5- Optimization algorithms
-6- Core models and mathematical foundations
-7- Next generation software tool

The research group ESAT-SCD at the university K.U.Leuven Belgium provides an excellent research environment being active in the broad area of mathematical engineering, including systems and control theory, neural networks and machine learning, nonlinear systems and complex networks, optimization, signal processing, bioinformatics and biomedicine.

The research will be conducted under the supervision of Prof. Johan Suykens. Interested candidates having a solid mathematical background and master degree can apply for these positions by sending their CV and motivation letter to johan.suykens@esat.kuleuven.be. For further information on these positions you may contact Johan Suykens.

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
UMONSAlain Vande Wouwer

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