Program

Massimiliano Esposito, University of Luxembourg, Physics and Materials Science Research Unit   

"Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics: From Quantum Dots to Metabolic Networks"

Speaker Biography
Professor Massimiliano Esposito is a theoretical physicist specializing in statistical physics and the study of complex systems. His current research focuses on energy and information processing in small quantum systems and biological systems, in particular chemical reaction networks. He obtained his PhD in 2004 at Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium. After two postdocs in California at UC Irvine and UC San Diego, he came back as a contract researcher for two years at ULB. In 2012 he was awarded a five year Attract Fellowship by the National Research Fund of Luxembourg to start his own research group "Complex Systems and Statistical Mechanics" in the Physics and Materials Science Research Unit at the University of Luxembourg. In 2016 he became Professor of Theoretical Physics and was awarded a five years Consolidator Grant (NanoThermo) by the European Research Council.

Christian Jallut, LAGEP, Lyon   

"Thermodynamical Engineering"

Speaker Biography
Prof. Christian JALLUT was graduated in 1981 from the “INSA de Lyon” polytechnic institute in Energy and Chemical Engineering. He also got a Master degree in Automatic Control. He worked for his PhD thesis on modeling and control of a distillation column coupled with a heat pump.
Between 1984 and 1987, he was involved at “INSA de Lyon” in a project concerning the use of solar energy in industrial buildings. The main subject was control and transient state thermal modeling of the system. Between 1987 and 1991, his activity was oriented toward chemical engineering and process control at Lyon University. He was particularly involved in batch process modeling and control and reaction calorimetry. 
Between, 1991 and 1994, he got a position of full Professor in Chemical Engineering at the “Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble” polytechnic institute, in the Electrochemistry and material science department (“Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Electrochimie et 
d’Electrométallurgie de Grenoble”). He made researches on the use of transient state techniques for measuring heat and mass transport parameters as well as liquid phase particulate fouling in heat exchangers in collaboration with the French Atomic Energy Agency (CEA, “Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique”).
He is now full Professor of Chemical Engineering at Lyon University since 1994. He is involved in transient state modeling and control in Chemical Engineering by using Thermodynamic concepts in the “Laboratoire d’Automatique, de Génie des Procédés et de Génie Pharmaceutique” (Process Control, Chemical Engineering and Pharmaceutical Engineering Laboratory) of this university.
As a teacher, Prof. Christian JALLUT gives lectures in Thermodynamics, Dynamic modeling of processes and Transport Phenomena.

Arjan van der Schaft, University of Groningen, Johann Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science, Jan C. Willems Center for Systems and Control

"The geometric formulation of non-equilibrium macroscopic thermodynamics: from network modeling to control"

Speaker Biography
Arjan van der Schaft received the undergraduate and PhD degrees in mathematics from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. In 1982 he joined the Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Twente, where he was appointed as full professor in Mathematical Systems and Control Theory in 2000. In September 2005 he returned to his Alma Mater as professor in Mathematics.
Arjan van der Schaft is Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Fellow of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), and was the 2013 recipient of the 3-yearly awarded Certificate of Excellent Achievements of the IFAC Technical Committee on Nonlinear Systems. He was Invited Speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Madrid, 2006. 
Books authored by him include Variational and Hamiltonian Control Systems (1987, with P.E. Crouch), Nonlinear Dynamical Control Systems (1990, 2016, with H. Nijmeijer), L2-Gain and Passivity Techniques in Nonlinear Control (1996, 2000, 2017), An Introduction to Hybrid Dynamical Systems (2000, with J.M. Schumacher), and Port-Hamiltonian Systems: An Introductory Overview (2014, with D. Jeltsema).