Message of the Coordinators

We would like to draw your attention to two additional events that will be organized soon within our network. A fifth course was added to our graduate school courses this year: Emmanuel WITRANT of the Université Joseph Fourier of Grenoble will give a course on Control-oriented modeling and system identification at the K.U.Leuven. And the University of Namur hosts Michel BIERLAIRE of EPFL, Switzerland as International FRANCQUI Chair. He will give a series of lectures on Mathematical modeling of choice behavior: from theory to practice. You will find more information on these events in this newsletter.


Vincent Blondel and Paul Van Dooren
DYSCO coordinators


Newsletter subscription

The newsletter Dysco News is the monthly newsletter of the Belgian Interuniversity Attraction Pole "Dynamical systems, control and optimization" (DYSCO) funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office. The DYSCO network includes partners at UCL, KUL, UGent, VUB, ULg, UMons, UNamur, and international partners at Stanford, Princeton and MIT. Isystems, control and optimization. Subscription is free and open to anyone: subscribe here, or unsubscribe.


Staff Movements and Visitors

UCL
  • François Gonze, PhD student, supervisor Raphaël Jungers (starting date : February 3, 2014).
KUL
  • Michal Salaj, promotor Moritz Diehl, 10/03/2014-09/06/2014.
  • Nassim Tayari, promotor Sabine Van Huffel, 03/03/2014-02/05/2014.
UMons
  • On the 1st of February, 2014, Prof. Joseph Winkin has joined our team for a 6-month sabbatical stay.
  • On the 1st of March, 2014, the UMons group will be welcoming Julian Oviedo Santana from UNAM (Mexico). Mr Santana will do a PhD thesis in modeling of biohydrogen and biofuel production.
UNamur
  • Michel Bierlaire, Transport and Mobility Laboratory (TRANSP-OR), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland ; March 12-14, 2014.
  • Anne De Wit, Laboratoire de Glaciologie, ULB, Brussels ; March 10-12, 2014.
  • Sander Houweling, SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, NL - Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (IMAU), Utrecht University, NL ; March 10-12, 2014.
  • Maarten Krol, SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, NL - Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research (IMAU), Utrecht University, NL - Department of Meteorology and Air Quality (MAQ), Wageningen University and Research Centre, NL ; March 10-12, 2014.
  • Anastasios Noulas, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK ; March 17-28, 2014.
  • Franck Pattyn, Laboratoire de Glaciologie, ULB, Brussels ; March 10-12, 2014.
  • Stefan Vandewalle, Division of Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics, KULeuven ; March 10-12, 2014.
  • Emmanuel Witrant, Division of Numerical Analysis and Applied Mathematics, KULeuven - Automatic control department, GIPSA-lab/Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France - Laboratoire de Glaciologie, ULB, Brussels ; March 10-12, 2014.

Seminars

UCL
  • March 4, 2014 – 14:00, Euler seminar room
    Alessandro D'Innocenzo (University of L'Aquila, Italy), Formal methods for analysis and co-design of Wireless Networked Control Systems
  • March 6, 2014 – 11:00, Euler seminar room
    Herbert Mangesius (TU München, Germany), Energy and Information in Network Systems
KUL
  • March 6, 2014 - 14:00-16:00, ESAT 00.62
    A-DATADRIVE-B progress meeting - Part II
    • 14:00 "Robust topological analysis of scientific data" by Marko Seslija
    • 14:20 "Noise level estimation for model selection in kPCA denoising" by Carolina Varon
    • 14:40 "Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering for Big Data Networks" by Raghvendra Mall
    • 15:00 "Semi-supervised learning using the KSC core model" by Siamak Mehrkanoon
    • 15:20 "SVD truncation schemes for fixed-size kernel models" by Ricardo Castro
    • 15:40 "Support Vector Machines for gesture based applications" by Karen Vanderloock
VUB

ELEC Seminars take place at the department ELEC (Pleinlaan 2, Building K, 7th floor) every two weeks, normally on Thursdays in the morning. The final time and date are announced at least one week before a seminar at https://intranet.vub.ac.be/doctoral-schools/nse/team-seminars/elec-seminars/.

  • 06/03/2014 (Thursday) - 10:30 - 11:30
    Edwin Reynders (KU Leuven)
  • 20/03/2014 (Thursday) - 10:30 - 11:30
    Sándor Kolumbán (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)
ULg

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

UNamur

Unless otherwise stated, naXys weekly seminars take place on each Tuesday, 1pm, in the Salle de Conférence (room E25), Department of Mathematics, 2nd floor of the Faculté des Sciences Economiques, Sociales et de Gestion building, Rempart de la Vierge 8, Namur. They are announced on this webpage.

Thesis defenses

UNamur
  • Audrey Compère, Stabilité des astéroïdes multiples, auditorium E12 (first floor of the Faculté des Sciences Economiques, Sociales et de Gestion building), Rempart de la Vierge 8, Namur. Wednesday 5 March 2014, 3:30 pm.
  • Johan Barthélemy, A parallelized micro-simulation platform for population and mobility behaviour. Application to Belgium, auditorium E11 (first floor of the Faculté des Sciences Economiques, Sociales et de Gestion building), Friday 25 April, 2014, 4 pm.

Graduate School in Systems, Optimization, Control and Networks

The SOCN Graduate School 2013-2014 programme is available here : http://sites.uclouvain.be/socn/

The next course is entitled Low-rank approximation and its applications. It will be given by Ivan MARKOVSKY (VUB) on March 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 2014 (9:00-12:00) at K.U.Leuven (Room 00.62, ESAT, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10, B-3001 Heverlee-Leuven)

More information about this course : http://sites.uclouvain.be/socn/Courses/Courses2013-4

On-line registrations are welcome via this form.

This year a fifth course is offered. The course Control-oriented modeling and system identification, by Emmanuel WITRANT (Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble), will take place on April 22, 23, 24, 25, 2014 (Tuesday-Friday, from 9.00-12.00 and 13.30-15.00), at K.U.Leuven (Department of Computer Science, Celestijnenlaan 200A, 3001 Heverlee, room A05.001).

More information about this course : http://sites.uclouvain.be/socn/Courses/Courses2013-5

As usually, on-line registrations are welcome via this form.

Study Days, Workshops and Summer Schools

International FRANCQUI Chair - Mathematical modeling of choice behavior: from theory to practice

Dates: March 12-14, 2014

Thanks to the Francqui foundation, the Department of Mathematics of the University of Namur is proud to host during this academic year 2013-2014 an International FRANCQUI Chair.

The guest lecturer will be Prof. Michel BIERLAIRE, EPFL, Switzerland, and this chair will be devoted to Mathematical modeling of choice behavior: from theory to practice.

See the web site for more detail.

Master's level course : Lectures on Data Collection and on Data Analysis and Visualization

In the framework of the course "Multi-disciplinary project for enterprise (SMATM203)" of the Master program of Mathematics, the students will benefit of 30 hours of lectures delivered by Bruno Gonçalves, UMarseille, (Mon 24/2- Fri 28/2, 10h00-12h00, 5 lectures on "data collection") and Anastasios Noulas, Cambridge (Mon 17/3 - Fri 28/3, 10h00-12h00, 10 lectures on "data analysis and visualization"). Some short modules of 2 up to 10 hours will complete the students' formation.

The project itself (which is shortly described below) and the short modules are intended only for Master students in Mathematics of the University of Namur. However the lectures are open to everybody who is interested. Please contact Timoteo Carletti (timoteo.carletti@unamur.be) for more detail if necessary. The lectures will take place in the Salle de Conférence (room E25), Department of Mathematics, 2nd floor of the Faculté des Sciences Economiques, Sociales et de Gestion building, Rempart de la Vierge 8, Namur.

Project: People move since ever, for work, for hobby, for socio-economics reasons, etc. They move at different frequencies - daily, weekly, yearly - and across different distances (intra-cities, between cities, between countries). Study human mobility has been and still it is a main research field for the implications it can have on disease spreading, socio-economics issues, information diffusion, etc. After a first phase lasting for many years, where data were collected mainly using surveys and direct interviews, the advent of the technology introduced, as a byproduct, the possibility to track easily people displacements, for instance any financial transaction you do, any ticket you buy, any use of your credit card, etc are registerd somewhere. Nowadays internet and the improved connectivity of everyone (smart phones, tablets, portables, etc) through (social) apps, improved even more the amount of data available. We are now thus able to follow people during their everyday activities, recording visited locations and time stamps.

Goals: Using data from foursquare, students would determine the most common "chain of activities" and compare them with other available ones, for instance the ones obtained by the GRT-naXys group in the framework of human mobility in Belgium. Moreover students should be able to create a "simple" prediction model allowing them to forecast the next check-in from the knowledge of the present one (Markov case) and also of the previous one (memory case).

FNRS Graduate Schools MATH and COMPLEX - Inverse problems and environment : some new tools for atmospheric studies

Dates: March 10-12, 2014

Place: University of Namur

More info: http://www.graduatecollegescience.be/detail.php?lang=en&id=evt_668

Local organizers: Joseph Winkin and Timoteo Carletti

Scientific coordinator: Emmanuel Witrant

Keynote speakers: Anne De Wit, Sander Houweling, Maarten Krol, Franck Pattyn, Annick Sartenaer, Stefan Vandewalle, Emmanuel Witrant.

Abstract: Global warming is now unequivocal, as mentionned in the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (November 2013). This climate change can be monitored and analyzed, for example, by understanding the warming of the atmosphere and the recent evolution of greenhouse gas. The complexity of the dynamics and the sparsity of the measurements (e.g. direct measurements of the atmosphere or trace gas measurements in ice cores) necessitate advanced methods to reconstruct the past events. The aim of this school is to introduce recent modeling and inverse techniques for solving such key environmental problems with high societal impact. It will emphasize the need for an interdisciplinary approach involving environmental science, optimization, numerical analysis and signal processing. The classes are intended for a broad audience with basic mathematical background (e.g. calculus and differential equations).

DISC Summer School : Data-driven Modeling for Control

Centerparcs park Zandvoort, Zandvoort, The Netherlands - June 16-19, 2014

The organizers have the pleasure to invite you to participate in the DISC Summer School on "Data-driven Modeling for Control", which is scheduled to take place from June 16-19, 2014, at Centerparcs park Zandvoort, Zandvoort, The Netherlands.

The invitation is aimed at research students and staff members of DISC, and other researchers and engineers engaged in the systems and control area. Distinguished speakers will each present a series of tutorial lectures.

The field of dynamic modeling on the basis of measurement data (or system identification) has developed towards a mature field with well-established basic methods and tools, and with applications in a wide range of fields in science and engineering. However, whereas the classical problem for relatively simple (linear time-invariant) systems has been explored extensively, many questions remain when extending the class of systems to more complex (nonlinear) cases, or when addressing questions on (optimal) experiment design for particular modeling goals, model accuracy bounds, as well as when considering structured models in terms of physical, closed-loop or network structures.

In this 4-day summer school attention will be given to the current status of and modern developments in the area of data-driven modeling for control.

Particular attention will be given to:

  • A historical positioning of the field
  • Bias/variance trade-offs in parametric and non-parametric modeling
  • Regularization and Bayesian methods
  • Experiment design and goal oriented identification
  • Structured systems
  • Frequency domain methods and nonlinearities
  • Subspace methods
  • Linear parameter-varying models

Lecturers

The main program will consist of various speakers. Keynote lectures will be given by:

  • Prof. Michel Gevers, Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve and Free University Brussels, Belgium
  • Prof. Lennart Ljung, University of Linköping, Sweden
  • Prof. Håkan Hjalmarsson, KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
  • Prof. Alessandro Chiuso, University of Padova, Italy
  • Prof. Johan Schoukens, Free University Brussels, Belgium

to be complemented with contributions from the DISC community.

Registration

The registration fee, which includes boarding and lodging, is

1000,- Euro for non-DISC members

800,- Euro for DISC-students and DISC-members

The school is limited to 60 participants based on a first-come first-serve policy. The registration deadline is June 1, 2013.

You can register at the following website: https://disc-forum.nl. Non DISC members can also sent an email to: secr@disc.tudelft.nl This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for registration. (Please mention your full name and university including address).

For further information, please contact the DISC administrative office: Saskia van der Meer (s.m.vandermeer@tudelft.nl) or the organizers: Paul Van den Hof (p.m.j.vandenhof@tue.nl), Roland Toth (r.toth@tue.nl), Tom Oomen (t.a.e.oomen@tue.nl) and Xavier Bombois (x.j.a.bombois@tudelft.nl).

Announcement in PDF format

Vacancies

PhD position at Université de Lorraine / Research Center for Automatic Control (CRAN)

Thesis topic : Diagnosis of nonlinear systems using kernel machines

Keywords : Diagnosis, principal component analysis, kernel machines, fault detectability and isolability, pre-image problem

Advisors : Maya KALLAS, Didier MAQUIN

Participating team : José RAGOT, Gilles MOUROT

Laboratory : Research Center for Automatic Control (CRAN), 2 avenue de la Forêt de Haye – TSA 60604, 54518 Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy cedex

Dates : October 1st 2014 to September 30th 2017

For more information, read the PhD vacancy announcement (PDF format).

Miscellaneous

Postdoc fellowships to non-EU researchers - BELSPO call for proposals

In a nutshell...

The stimulation of international mobility and the attraction of researchers from abroad is one of the priorities of the European Research Area.

In this context and intending to stimulate the S&T cooperation, the Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) does implement a fellowship scheme for highly qualified non EU researchers (i.e. postdoctoral level or equivalent experience), granting them an opportunity to work during 6 to 18 months in a Belgian research team.

This initiative started in 1981. Till now already 750 fellowships were granted.

Call for proposals

The call for proposals 2014 is open. The deadline for application is 30 April 2014 at 17:00 hour.

Further information, including eligibility and selection criteria : http://www.belspo.be/belspo/organisation/call_postdoc_en.stm

Papers produced by the IAP Network

UCL

Krings, Gautier; Carpantier, Jean-François; Delvenne, Jean-Charles. Trade integration and trade imbalances in the European Union: a network perspective. In: PLoS One, Vol. 9, no.1, p. e83448 (2014). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0083448.g008. http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/139490.

Boumal, Nicolas; Mishra, Bamdev; Absil, Pierre-Antoine; Sepulchre, Rodolphe. Manopt, a Matlab toolbox for optimization on manifolds. In: Journal of Machine Learning Research, (2014). (Accepted). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/139492.

Pompili, Filippo; Gillis, Nicolas; Absil, Pierre-Antoine; Glineur, François. Two algorithms for orthogonal nonnegative matrix factorization with application to clustering. In: Neurocomputing, (2014). (Accepted). http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/139493.

Wen Huang, K. A. Gallivan, P.-A. Absil, A Broyden Class of Quasi-Newton Methods for Riemannian Optimization, submitted, 2014.

Michel Gevers, Alexandre S. Bazanella, Daniel F. Coutinho and Soura Dasgupta, Identifiability and Excitation of Linearly Parametrized Rational Systems, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2014.

KUL

N.S. Abo-Ghander, F. Logist, J.R. Grace, J.F.M. Van Impe, S.S.E.H. Elnashaie and C. Jim Lim, Heterogeneous Modeling of a Membrane Reactor Coupling Dehydrogenation of Ethylbenzene with Hydrogenation of Nitrobenzene: Fickian diffusion model, Chemical Engineering and Processing 77: 50–65, 2014.

D. Telen, I. Stamati, M. da Silva, F. Logist, J. Van Impe, Optimal experiment design for model discrimination of nonlinear biochemical systems using the sigma point method, Escape 24, Budapest (Hungary), June 15-18, 2014 (Accepted for oral presentation).

D. Vercammen, F. Logist, J. Van Impe, Estimation of Specific Fluxes in Metabolic Networks using Non-linear Dynamic Optimization, Escape 24, Budapest (Hungary), June 15-18, 2014 (Accepted for oral presentation).

M. Vallerio, D. Claessens, F. Logist and J. Van Impe, Multi-objective and robust optimal control of a CVD reactor for polysilicon production, ESCAPE 2014, Budapest, Hungary, June 15-18, 2014 (Accepted for oral presentation).

Siguenza G.L., Van den Abeele A., Vandewalle J., Verhaaren H., Cattrysse D., Using time-driven activity-based costing to support library management decisions : A case study for lending and returning processes, Library Quarterly, vol. 84, no. 1, 2014, pp. 76-98.

Siguenza G.L., Van den Abeele A., Vandewalle J., Verhaaren H., Cattrysse D., A holistic approach to supporting academic libraries in resource allocation processes, Internal Report 14-16, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2014. Accepted for publication in Library Quarterly.

Varon C., Montalto A., Jansen K., Lagae L., Marinazzo D., Faes L., Van Huffel S., Interictal Cardiorespiratory Variability in Temporal Lobe and Absence Epilepsy in Childhood, Internal Report 14-17, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2014.

Widjaja D., Montalto A., Vlemincx E., Marinazzo D., Faes L., Van Huffel S., Information Dynamics in Cardiorespiratory Time Series during Mental Stress Testing, Internal Report 14-18, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2014.

Cichocki A., Mandic D., Phan A.-H., Caiafa C., Zhou G., Zhao Q., De Lathauwer L., Tensor Decompositions for Signal Processing Applications. From Two-way to Multiway Component Analysis, Internal Report 14-19, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2014. Accepted for publication in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

You Q., Wan Q., Liu Y., A short note on Strongly convex programming for exact matrix completion and robust principal component analysis, Inverse Problems and Imaging, vol. 7, no. 1, Feb. 2013, pp. 305-306.

Varon C., Minter J., Stapleton M., Thomson S., Jaecques S., Sanders-van Wijk S., Brunner-La Rocca H.P., Van Huffel S., Telehealth for patients with heart failure: A comparison between telehealth systems, Internal Report 14-21, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2014. Accepted for publication in The International eHealth, Telemedicine and Health ICT Forum (Med-e-Tel).

Willemen T., Van Deun D., Verhaert V., Van Huffel S., Haex B., Vander Sloten J., Off-body registration of respiratory and cardiac activity for use in smart bedding systems, Internal Report 14-23, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2014.

Koolen N., Jansen K., Vervisch J., Matic V., De Vos M., Naulaers G., Van Huffel S., Line Length as a Robust Method to Detect High-Activity Events: Automated Burst Detection in Premature EEG Recordings, Internal Report 14-24, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2014. Accepted for publication in Clinical Neurophysiology.

Strobbe G.L.E., van Mierlo P., De Vos M., Mijovic B., Hallez H., Van Huffel S., Lopez J.D., Vandenberghe S., Bayesian model selection of template forward models for EEG source reconstruction, Internal Report 14-27, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2014. Accepted for publication in NeuroImage.

Luca S., Karsmakers P., Cuppens K., Croonenborghs T., Van de Vel A., Ceulemans B., Lagae L., Van Huffel S., Vanrumste B., Detecting rare events using extreme value statistics applied to epileptic convulsions in children, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, vol. 60, no. 2, Feb. 2014, pp. 89-96.

VUB

P. Carbone, G. Vandersteen, Bias Compensation When Identifying Static Nonlinear Functions Using Averaged Measurements, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, accepted, 2014

Stefano De Marchi, Konstantin Usevich, On certain multivariate Vandermonde determinants whose variables separate, Linear Algebra and Its Applications, accepted for publication

M. Scholz, S. Chen, S. Thijs, D. Linten, G. Hellings, G. Vandersteen, M. Sawada, G. Groeseneken, System-level ESD Protection Design using On-Wafer Characterization and Transient Simulations, IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability, accepted for publication

I. Markovsky and K. Usevich, Software for weighted structured low-rank approximation, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, Vol. 256, pp. 278-292, 2014

M.L.D. Lumori, E. Geerardyn, J. Schoukens, J. Lataire, Smoothing the LPM Estimate of the Frequency Response Function Via an Impulse Response Truncation Technique, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 63, No. 1, pp. 214 – 220

Maarten Schoukens, Rik Pintelon, Yves Rolain, Identification of Wiener–Hammerstein systems by a nonparametric separation of the best linear approximation, Automatica, Vol. 50, No. 2, February 2014, Pages 628–634

H. Maes, G.Vandersteen, M. Muehlebach, C. Ionescu, A Fan-based, Low-frequent, Forced Oscillation Technique Apparatus, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 63, No. 3, pp. 603-611, 2014

UMons

J. A. Moreno, A. Vande Wouwer. Special Issue on Nonlinear Modeling, Estimation and Control of Biological Systems: Editorial Note. Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering 37(1) (2014).

Z. Amribt, L. Dewasme, A. Vande Wouwer, Ph. Bogaerts. Optimization and Robustness Analysis of Hybridoma Cell Fed-Batch Cultures Using the Overflow Metabolism Model. Accepted in Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering Journal.

Z. Amribt, L. Dewasme, A. Vande Wouwer, Ph. Bogaerts. Parameter Identification for State Estimation: Design of an Extended Kalman Filter for Hybridoma Cell Fed-batch Cultures. Accepted for the 19th IFAC Wolrd Congress, Cape Town, South Africa, 26-29 August 2014.

UNamur

L. Tabourier, A.-S. Libert and R. Lambiotte, Rank Merging: A method to improve link prediction in large-scale social networks, submitted to KDD (2014).

V. Salnikov, D. Schien, H. Youn, R. Lambiotte and M.T. Gastner, The geography and carbon footprint of mobile phone use in Cote d'Ivoire, EPJ Data Science, 3/3 (2014).

IAP Contact Persons

UCLIsabelle Hisette
KULIda Tassens
UGentMargot Roels
VUBAnn Pintelon
ULgSophie Cimino
UMonsLaurent Dewasme
UNamurJoseph Winkin

Useful links : UCL | KUL | UGent | VUB | ULg | UMons | UNamur | Stanford | Princeton | MIT