Organization and Participants

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the themes of the school, it belongs to the following Graduate Colleges

• Graduate College in Engineering Sciences
• Graduate College in Sciences

The Graduate School gathers Belgian teams (UAntwerp, UNamur, KU Leuven, UCLouvain, UGent, ULB, ULiège, UMONS, VUB). It essentially merges the Graduate School in Systems and Control (started in 1992 as an initiative of the Interuniversity Attraction Pole on Modelling, Simulation and Control of Complex Systems) with the Graduate Program in Mathematical Programming (sponsored by the FNRS as a 3rd cycle program since 1994). The participating teams are active in the area of Systems, Optimization, Control and Networks, or have strong interest in topics related to it.

A common research theme pursued by the participating teams consists in the modelling of certain systems and phenomena with the purpose of controlling or optimizing their behavior and performance.

These models are based on dynamical systems, differential (or difference) equations and mathematical programming formulations. Research of the participating teams focusses on the identification, analysis, control and optimization of these models, including the corresponding theory, algorithmic aspects and numerical resolution techniques.

This area of growing interest finds numerous applications in various fields such as automatic control, biotechnology and biomedical engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, production and supply chain management and planning, process engineering, robotics, routing, traffic or service networks and signal processing.

Funding

The Graduate School gets yearly fundings from the FNRS and from the FSR (Fonds Spécial de Recherche - UCLouvain).

Steering Committee

A steering committee coordinates the teaching activities of the Graduate School.

The steering committee has at least one representative of each involved university.

The current steering committee is as follows : 

• M. Ahookhosh, UAntwerp
• P.-A. Absil, UCLouvain (director)
• D. Bongartz, KU Leuven
• L. De Lathauwer, KU Leuven
• B. De Moor, KU Leuven
• D. Dochain, UCLouvain 
• F. Glineur, UCLouvain
• M. Kinnaert, ULB
• J. Lataire, VUB 
• Q. Louveaux, ULiège
• A. Mauroy, UNamur (co-director)
• K. Meerbergen, KU Leuven
• W. Michiels, KU Leuven
• G. Pipeleers, KU Leuven
• P. Sacré, ULiège
• A. Sarlette, UGent
• A. Vande Wouwer, UMONS
• J. Winkin, UNamur

(November 28, 2022)

Objectives

The main objective of the Graduate School is to provide a high quality scientific environment and a well-balanced graduate-level program for the Belgian doctoral students in Systems, Optimization, Control and Networks.

Several activities are organized with the following objectives in mind.

The Graduate School

• provides high level graduate training for doctoral students
• builds a network of all Belgian research teams that are active in the area and improve their international visibility
• organizes conferences and workshops in its area of interest
• strengthens the links between Belgian teams via co-supervision of doctoral theses
• interacts with European initiatives such as the Marie Curie exchange and training program
• encourages student exchanges within national and international programs.

 

SOCN  aims at bringing together researchers in the field of Automatic Control in Belgium.

SOCN applied to become the Belgian NMO (National Member Organization) of IFAC.

Doctoral training offered

The training activities take the following various forms:

• Graduate level courses:
  About four courses a year are organized. These include lecture notes and evaluation facilities. Half of the courses are typically taught by invited lecturers. The courses are open to students from abroad. In order to foster interactions, the lectures take place on site and, by default, they cannot be attended remotely. On some occasions, recordings of the lectures may be offered, but the availability and the quality of such recordings is not guaranteed. 
   
• Seminar series:
  Every partner organizes seminars on a regular basis. The information is centralized and advertized via this web site's home page.
   
• Specialized workshops:
  Workshops on selected topics are occasionally organized. These workshops typically target a more specialized audience. Examples of past initiatives of this type are the Workshops on Dynamics and Computation, on Integrated Text and Data-Mining, a Summer school on Modern Convex Optimization and a NATO Advanced Study Institute on Learning Theory and Practice.
   
• Scientific meetings:
  Meetings with a broader range of interest are organized on a regular basis. Examples are the annual Benelux Meetings on Systems and Control and the Han-sur-Lesse Mathematical Programming Conferences.

The different universities and teams involved are listed below with keywords describing their research activities related to the themes of the graduate school and the name of the contact person.

UAntwerp

UNamur

UGent

KU Leuven

UCLouvain

ULB

ULiège

UMons

VUB