Special Sessions


In addition to the main technical program, the conference includes lunch-time and afternoon special sessions on industry, education, emerging topics, and funding opportunities.

Wednesday Noon Special Sessions


An Overview of NSF Programs

Sponsor: National Science Foundation
Date and Time: 12:00PM – 1:30 PM, Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Location: Denver
Organizer: Dr. Irina Dolinskaya

Summary: The National Science Foundation (NSF) offers a number of funding opportunities for investigators working in the field of controls, both within the disciplinary programs in Engineering and other directorates, and through cross-cutting initiatives that are foundation-wide. This presentation will describe opportunities that are relevant to the robotics, dynamics and controls communities. The presentation will also describe programs targeted toward junior investigators, as well as guidelines for proposal preparation and NSF's Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria. Question-and-answer session will follow the presentation.

Speaker Biographies:

Dr. Kishan Baheti handles the areas of Control and Sensor Networks in the Power, Controls and Adaptive Networks (PCAN) Program in ECS. Dr. Baheti received the B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering in India from VRCE Nagpur, and from BITS Pilani, respectively. In 1970, he came to USA and received M.S. in Information and Computer Science from University of Oklahoma and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Oregon State University. In 1976, Dr. Baheti joined the Control Engineering Laboratory of GE Corporate Research and Development Center in Schenectady, NY. His work focused on advanced multivariable control for jet engines, signal and image processing systems, computer- aided control system design, vision-based robots for precision welding, model-based fault identification and parallel implementation of Kalman filters. Dr. Baheti and his colleagues received IR-100 award for robotic welding vision system. He has organized a series of educational workshops for GE engineers that resulted in innovative product developments and contributed to enhance university collaborations with GE business divisions. In 1989, Dr.Baheti joined NSF as a Program Director in the Division of Electrical and Communications Systems. His contributions include the development of NSF initiatives on "Combined Research and Curriculum Development", "Semiconductor Manufacturing", and NSF/EPRI Initiative on "Intelligent Control". He was instrumental in the development of NSF Initiative on "Research Experience for Teachers" to involve middle and high school teachers in engineering research that can be transferred to pre-college classrooms. Recently he is involved in networked control systems, sensor and actuator networks, imaging and computational video, micro and nano systems, medical robotics, science of learning, and dynamics and control of biological and medical systems. He has served as associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, member of the Control Systems Board of Governors, chair for Public Information Committee, and awards chair for the American Automatic Control Council (AACC). He received "Distinguished Member Award" from the IEEE Control Systems Society. In 1997, he was elected a Fellow of IEEE.

Dr. Jordan Berg is Program Director in the Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI), in the Engineering Directorate (ENG) of the US National Science Foundation (NSF). He is Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Texas Tech University, where he served as Co- Director of the Nano Tech Center, and Associate Director of the DISCO (Dynamic Intelligent Systems, Control and Optimization) group. His research interests are in mechatronics, nonlinear control, and robotics. He received B.S.E. and M.S.E. degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 1981 and 1984, respectively. For several years he was an Attitude Control Analyst with RCA Astro-Electronics in East Windsor, NJ. He received a Ph. D. in Mechanical Engineering and an M. S. in Mathematics from Drexel University in 1992. He was a postdoctoral researcher at USAF Wright Laboratories in Dayton, OH, and at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications in Minneapolis, MN. He has held numerous leadership positions, including Associate Editor of the ASME/IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control, and the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. He was Program Chair of the 2014 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference, General Chair of the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics, and General Chair of the 2018 American Control Conference. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division. In 2008 he spent seven months in Sri Lanka as a Fulbright Scholar. He was selected a Fellow of the ASME in 2011. He arrived at NSF as an IPA rotator in May, 2014, and became a member of the permanent NSF staff in September 2018.

Dr. Irina Dolinskaya is a Program Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Division of Civil, Mechanical & Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI). Dr. Dolinskaya services Dynamics, Control and Systems Diagnostics (DCSD) program, as well as National Robotics Initiative (NRI 2.0) and Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) NSF's 10 Big Ideas. Prior to joining NSF, Irina Dolinskaya was a faculty in the Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences department at Northwestern University. She obtained M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, and B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Florida. Dr. Irina Dolinskaya's research is in the field of transportation science and logistics with focus on adaptive modeling and solution approaches to integrate dynamic real-time information. Her current primary applications are in humanitarian logistics, optimal vessel performance, and electric vehicle routing. Irina Dolinskaya is the winner of the INFORMS Transportation Science & Logistics Society Dissertation Prize and the 2008 recipient of the Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Military Applications.

Dr. Robert G. Landers is a Curators' Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (formerly University of Missouri Rolla) and served as the department's Associate Chair for Graduate Affairs for eight years. He is currently a program manager at the National Science Foundation. He received his Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1997. His research interests are in the areas of modeling, analysis, monitoring, and control of manufacturing processes, and in the estimation and control of lithium ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. He has over 200 refereed technical publications and over $6M in research funding. He received the Society of Manufacturing Engineers' Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award in 2004 and the ASME Journal of Manufacturing Science and Engineering Best Paper Award in 2014. He is a Fellow of ASME, and a senior member of IEEE and SME.

Dr. Eduardo Misawa has a B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from University of Sao Paulo (1979 and 1983) and Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 1988), all in Mechanical Engineering with concentration in Dynamics and Control. He is currently a Program Director in the Directorate for Engineering at the National Science Foundation, where he manages the Engineering Research Centers (ERC) and Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN) programs. His research experience includes Nonlinear Dynamics, Nonlinear Control, Robust Control, Vibrations, Mechatronics, Nanotechnology, Precision Engineering, Vehicle Dynamics, Fluid Power Control, Bioinformatics, Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering.



Women in Control Luncheon Meeting

Sponsor: IEEE CSS Women in Control Committee
Date and Time: 12:00 – 1:30 Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Location: Ballroom F
Organizer(s):

  • Dr. Linda Bushnell, University of Washington
  • Dr. Afef Fekih, University of Louisiana
  • Dr. Jacquelien M.A. Scherpen, University of Groningen

Summary: The IEEE CSS Women in Control committee is responsible for, but not limited to, promoting membership, gathering and disseminating appropriate information about women in IEEE CSS and the profession, and facilitating the development of mentoring and programs to promote the retention, recruitment, and growth of women IEEE CSS members. The IEEE WiC invites all ACC women attendees to join us for our traditional luncheon with interesting speakers on the first day of the conference, Wednesday, July 1st, 2020.



Research with Broad Scope and High Impact in an Industrial Laboratory

Sponsor: Mitsubishi Electric (MERL)
Date and Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Location: Gold

Summary: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) is a leading research organization located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA that conducts fundamental research for industrially-motivated problems. MERL is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, a $41B global manufacturer of a wide range of products including industrial robots, automotive electronics and equipment, HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) systems, factory automation equipment, electrical power systems, elevators, satellites, and information visualization systems. MERL is an active and collaborative member of both the academic and industrial communities. MERL researchers collaborate with corporate laboratories and business units in Japan, as well as academic partners from around the world to develop novel solutions to challenging problems. In particular, several researchers at MERL develops new theoretical results in control and systems theory and apply them to a wide variety of products and applications.

In this talk we will present an overview of research activities at MERL, including fundamental controls research and the application of state-of-the-art control techniques to a variety of real-world systems. We will focus on fundamental research subjects including model predictive control and the control of constrained systems, estimation and motion planning for autonomous systems, and learning for control. In addition, we will describe how these fundamental research areas impact applications such as autonomous vehicles, spacecraft guidance and control, GNSS-based positioning, energy-efficient HVAC systems, high-precision manufacturing.

We encourage students, researchers and faculty interested in collaborating with MERL to attend this talk.

Speaker Biographies:

Dr. Karl Berntorp's research is on statistical signal processing, sensor fusion, and optimization-based control, with applications to automotive, aerospace, transportation, and communication systems. His work includes design and implementation of nonlinear filtering, constrained control, and motion-planning algorithms.

Dr. Claus Danielson's research interests are in model predictive control, constrained control, and networked control systems. His doctoral research was focused on exploiting symmetry in large-scale control and optimization problems.

Dr. Stefano Di Cairano's interests are model predictive control, constrained control, path planning, optimization algorithms, stochastic systems, and their applications to automotive, aerospace, and factory automation. Stefano is the Chair of IEEE CSS Technology Conferences Editorial Board, and the Vice-Chair of IFAC Technical Committee on Optimal Control.

Dr. Rien Quirynen's research interests are in model predictive control and moving horizon estimation, numerical algorithms for (nonlinear) dynamic optimization and real-time control applications. His doctoral research was focused on numerical simulation methods with efficient sensitivity propagation for real-time optimal control algorithms.



Wednesday Afternoon Special Sessions


Women in Controls in Industry

Sponsor: ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division, Automotive and Transportation Systems Technical Committee and the Energy Systems Technical Committee
Date and Time: 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM, and 4:00 PM -6:00 PM, Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Location: Ballroom F
Organizers:

  • Dr. Selina Pan, Toyota Research Institute
  • Dr. Marcello Canova, The Ohio State University
  • Dr. Mahdi Shahbakhti, University of Alberta
  • Dr. Yan Chen, Arizona State University
  • Dr. Carrie Hall, Illinois Institute of Technology

Summary: Academic research and industry development have a symbiotic relationship. The insights gleaned from academic research can be propagated into usable products and technologies by companies. The practical problems identified in industry can also inspire and develop new academic research topics and areas and these new areas of research and development can be explored jointly. This cycle and relationship is key for researchers to understand and to participate in. To facilitate these connections, every year, the ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Division organizes an industry special session at a major controls conference.

Nowadays, both academia and industry host increasingly diverse communities. These communities consist of researchers, engineers, teachers, programmers, and managers, and their members are thriving from many different backgrounds. A historically underrepresented group has been female engineers and engineers who identify as women. (For the purposes of brevity for this proposal, we will use the term "women" going forward.)

This session seeks to bring together both the importance of exposure to parallel work happening in industry, with the diverse people who are doing the work, to the American Control Conference. Academia is taking increasingly large strides to increase diversity in both its student population as well as its faculty. Industry is doing the same, in both similar and diverging ways, with efforts ranging from recruiting, changing hiring practices, evolving performance review processes, workshops in unconscious bias, employee resource groups, and setting diversity and inclusion as a company-wide initiative.

The speakers featured in this session have a variety of technical experiences and we aim to, first and foremost, focus on their technical work and present a wide array of different career paths. The purpose of this is twofold: 1) to showcase some of the current cutting-edge work being done in industry in controls, and 2) to demonstrate examples and inspire junior women researchers who may be looking for a broader range of career paths. The session will feature both a series of technical talks, as well as a panel discussion that will be moderated and open to questions from the audience, in order to provide room to discuss potential non-technical topics unique to the experience of being a woman in controls in industry.

This special session is sponsored by the Automotive Transportation Systems and Energy Systems Technical Committee. The proposed list of speakers consists of engineers from the following companies: RightHook Robotics, Tesla, Applied Materials, Built Robotics, Waymo (Google), Ford, Toyota Research Institute, General Motors, and a stealth robotics startup.

Organization and Contribution

This session includes contributions from industry engineers who have been active in the areas of automotive, energy, and mechatronics research and development areas. The tentative list of speakers is compiled from the automotive, energy, robotics, and tech industries.

The session is roughly organized into two parts. The first part (1:30 – 4:50 PM) features technical talks from each speaker in their area of expertise. The speakers featured come from a variety of different companies. We propose to feature speakers from RightHook, Applied Materials, Waymo (Google), Tesla, Built Robotics, and Ford, with additional speakers pending company approval from Toyota, GM, and a stealth robotics startup. These companies are all leading the industry in the automotive, robotics, and controls areas.

The second part (4:50 PM – 5:30 PM) features a panel discussion with a subset of speakers, with Selina Pan (industry liaison from the Automotive Transportation Systems Technical Committee) as the moderator, welcoming questions from the audience. Being able to hear the speakers discuss their career and life experiences as women working in industry in controls has the potential to provide key insights and inspiration to aspiring junior engineers who are still seeking a career path in STEM, whether in research, academia, industry, or the start-up world. Because the session focuses on women in controls, we see great value in presenting the stories of established speakers behind their technical work.

Presentations:

Speaker(s): Dr. Madeline Goh, RightHook Robotics
Abstract: Highly Automated Driving Development and the Simulation Portability Problem - For the last several years, questions have swirled around how autonomous vehicles will be validated. The general consensus has come to a mix of on-road testing and simulation. With so many companies and stakeholders in the mix, how will standards be determined and met? We present ScenarioScript: an open, portable specification for describing scenarios used for developing, testing, and demonstrating automated vehicle systems.

Speaker(s): Dr. Caroline Le Floch, Tesla
Dr. Raechel Tan, Applied Materials
Abstract: Advanced Control Applications in Semiconductor Processing Equipment - In semiconductor processing equipment, achieving the best device performance and yield requires minimal process variation. Fast controls is also important, since this determines the rate at which wafers can be processed. At Applied Materials, the Common Solutions Group is working on advanced control solutions to enable greater precision and faster throughput.

Speaker(s): Dr. Sarah Thor, Built Robotics
Abstract: From Human Algorithms to Computer Algorithms: A High-Level Planning Problem - Built Robotics is building the future of construction by developing AI guidance systems to transform construction equipment into autonomous robots. The technology combines sensors, such as GPS, cameras and lidar with proprietary software, in order to make construction safer and more productive. Human operators already possess great skill in operating heavy construction machinery, such as bulldozers, excavators and skid steers. Before an operator begins moving dirt, he or she has an inherent algorithm in mind on how to take the current terrain and transform it to meet the job specifications. Our robots must also assess the current terrain and autonomously come up with a plan to accomplish the same job specifications. As robots have different capabilities to humans, the algorithm a human uses does not strictly overlap with the robot's algorithm. In this talk, we will go over some of the techniques and considerations human operators keep in mind for high-level planning of the job and discuss how Built Robotics tackles the high-level planning problem.

Speaker(s): Dr. Xin Zhou, Waymo (Google)
Abstract: This talk will focus on how individuals with training and expertise in control can branch into new technical disciplines, discover new research challenges at the interface of control and other fields, and explore different career options. Using my own experience, I will give several examples about how knowledge in control can help with many aspects of the development of driver-assist and autonomous driving technologies, including control and planning, object tracking, and deep learning. At the end of the talk, a brief introduction to Waymo will be given.

Speaker(s): Dr. Sara Dadras, Ford
Abstract: According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2017 alone, the NHTSA reported 34,247 fatal crashes in the United States with 37,133 fatalities. Furthermore, as of August 1, 2019, the California DMV has received 186 Autonomous Vehicle Collision Reports. Ford Motor Company aims to help society with not only providing the safest vehicles on the road but also making the vehicles more comfortable for the customers. Automated driving is one solution that significantly improves roadway safety. This talk gives an overview of Ford Greenfield Labs at Palo Alto, California, and reviews some areas of research in automated driving systems.


Panel Discussion:

  • Dr. Madeline Goh, RightHook Robotics
  • Dr. Raechel Tan, Applied Materials
  • Dr. Sarah Thornton, Built Robotics
  • Dr. Sara Dadras, Ford

Speaker Biographies:

Dr. Madeline Goh left Minnesota and academia after earning her PhD in mathematics to pursue a career in industry. She is particularly inspired by solving problems that impact people's daily lives, from barcodes to self-driving vehicles. Currently she is a Machine Learning Expert and Senior Engineer at San Jose based startup, RightHook, Inc. RightHook provides a simulation platform for testing and development of autonomous vehicles. Madeline is a people person and loves spending time with her siblings, urban exploration, puppies, and supporting women in technology.

Dr. Caroline Le Floch leads the development of the Autobidder software at Tesla, the first automated and algorithmic bidding platform for utility scale energy storage. I obtained a Master of Science in Applied Mathematics from Ecole Polytechnique (Paris, France), and PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. During my PhD in the Energy Controls and Applications Lab at UC Berkeley, I focused on Smart Charging optimization methods for large fleets of electric vehicles, including distributed optimization and Plug and Play model predictive Controls. After PhD I created a startup and sold smart charging software to automakers and aggregators. In May 2018 I joined the energy optimization team at Tesla, where I have focused on utility scale projects and the development of algorithmic bidding in energy markets. I am the leading engineer for Autobidder – the money making machine – that automates bidding of energy storage assets in electricity markets.

Dr. Raechel Tan is a controls engineering manager in the Mechatronics Center of Excellence at Applied Materials. She leads a team to develop advanced solutions for temperature, pressure, and motion control across the company. Before starting at Applied Materials, she obtained her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley, where she did research on automotive engine control.

Dr. Sarah Thornton received her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Stanford University in 2018. Her thesis was on designing autonomous vehicle motion planning algorithms with ethical considerations. She obtained her Master's in mechanical engineering from MIT in 2013 and her Bachelor's in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley in 2011. She currently works as a Senior Robotics Engineer at Built Robotics, where she has worked on an array of projects ranging from designing parts of their safety system to designing high-level planning algorithms.

Dr. Xin Zhou received her PhD from the University of Michigan in Mechanical Engineering in 2017 with a focus on control, estimation, dynamic system modeling and identification. Prior to joining the University of Michigan, she received her Bachelor of Engineering in Machine Design, Manufacturing, and Automation from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2012. Dr. Zhou joined Aptiv immediately after receiving her doctorate to develop object tracking algorithms for advanced driver-assistance systems. In 2018, she joined Waymo as a Software Engineer/Robotics Researcher focusing on perception of the autonomous vehicle. She is the lead author of six publications and a finalist for three best student paper awards and a best paper award.

Dr. Sara Dadras (IEEE Senior Member, 2018) is currently an Automated Driving Senior Research Engineer at Ford Motor Company. Prior to that, she was a research engineer working on research and development of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle systems with respect to energy management. Passionate about vehicles, she worked on various projects including battery management systems, wireless power transfer systems, model based system design for advanced HEVs and PHEVs. Her current research interest areas include autonomous vehicles, advanced driver assist systems, hybrid electric and electric vehicles, nonlinear systems and control, and application of fractional calculus in control of nonlinear systems. Dr. Dadras was the recipient of the 2019 Forest R. McFarland Award (SAE) and Ford 2018 R&A Technical Achievement Award (RARE Award). She is the Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, IEEE Access, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, Asian Journal of Control and Conference Editorial Board member of IEEE.



NREL's Control Research: Enabling a Clean Energy Future

Sponsor: The Department of Energy National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Date and Time: 1:30 PM –3:00 PM Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Location: Gold

Summary: The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), located in Golden, Colorado, is the United States' primary laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. Control plays a crucial role in NREL's mission to advance the science and engineering of energy efficiency, sustainable transportation, renewable power technologies, and energy systems integration. This special session will provide an overview of NREL, followed by in-depth discussion of NREL's control research in various areas such as building, grid, wind, energy storage, and transportation. The goal of the session is to give the audience an opportunity to understand the typical control research projects at NREL and how to collaborate with NREL.

Presentations:

  1. Dr. Xin Jin, "Model Predictive Control for Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings and Communities"
  2. Dr. Andrey Bernstein, "Learning to Optimally Control Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings"
  3. Dr. Jennifer King and Dr. Christopher Bay, "Autonomous Wind Farms: Distributed Optimization and Control for Wind"
  4. Dr. Ying Shi, "Advanced Controls of Energy Storage Systems for Better Performance, Safety, and Life"
  5. Dr. Myungsoo Jun, "Smart Electric Vehicle Charge Management for Demand Charge Mitigation"

Speaker Biographies:

Dr. Xin Jin is a Senior Research Engineer in the Buildings and Thermal Sciences Center at NREL. He is also the Sensors and Controls innovation area lead of NREL's Buildings program. His research focuses on building-to-grid integration, building control, machine learning with applications in buildings, and fault detection and diagnosis. Dr. Jin leads several research projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Building Technologies Office and Solar Energy Technologies Office. He is the lead developer of foreseeTM, a user-centric, cybersecure home energy management system. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University. He has authored more than 50 peer reviewed technical publications and 10 software records and U.S. patent. He is an ASHRAE member and IEEE member, and is a recipient of the 2018 R&D 100 Award and 2017 NREL President Award.

Dr. Andrey Bernstein received his B.Sc., M.Sc. (both summa cum laude), and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. Between 2010 and 2011, he was a visiting researcher at Columbia University. During 2011-2012, he was a visiting Assistant Professor at the Stony Brook University. From 2013 to 2016, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory for Communications and Applications of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Since October 2016 he has been a Senior Scientist at NREL. In February 2018, he became a group manager for the Energy Systems Control and Optimization Group. His research interests are in the decision and control problems in complex environments and related optimization and machine learning methods, with particular application to power and energy systems.

Dr. Jennifer King is a Research Engineer at NREL working at the National Wind Technology Center on hybrid system modeling and control. This includes developing model and real-time distributed optimization capabilities for wind farm control, optimally designing and operating utility-scale hybrid power plants as well as developing a control framework for large-scale autonomous energy systems. Jennifer obtained her Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics from the University of Minnesota in 2016 where her primary focus was on reduced-order modeling for wind farm control. Her current research focus areas are in reduced-order modeling, distributed control/optimization, and flow control.

Dr. Christopher Bay is a Research Engineer at NREL. His current work includes wind farm control and optimization, involving distributed control and layout design to improve performance and meet secondary objectives. He is also tackling multi-system problems through developing cooperative control between wind energy plants and buildings. Christopher received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2017 where his research centered around scalable, distributed control of building energy systems.

Dr. Ying Shi is a Senior Research Engineer in Power Systems Engineering Center at NREL. She has been working on lithium-ion battery systems testing, modeling, analysis and control to improve battery performance and life, increase pack utilization and reduce upfront and lifetime cost for stationary and automotive applications. Dr. Shi received a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China in July 2008. She received dual master's degree in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering from Pennsylvania State University in University Park, PA, USA, in May 2012 and May 2013. She received her Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Pennsylvania State University in December 2013, with focus on modeling, real-time identification and remediation of degradations in lead-acid batteries for hybrid locomotive applications

Dr. Myungsoo Jun has been performing research on vehicle electrification, EV charging station management, and smart transportation systems. He is currently actively conducting research on smart charge management and battery BMS for EV. He also led a project on smart intersection sensing systems. Before joining NREL in 2011, Dr. Jun had extensive experiences in the areas of autonomous ground vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles including UAV/UGV trajectory planning, dynamic collision avoidance, and attitude estimation with vision camera sensors. He conducted projects on UAV/UGV funded by DARPA, AFRL, and JPL during his affiliation with Oshkosh Corp., University of Florida, and Cornell University.



Workshop for Elementary, Middle and High School Students and Teachers and Parents: The Power, Beauty and Excitement of the Cross-Boundaries Nature of Control, a Field that Spans Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics

Sponsor: AACC, IEEE CSS, and IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Control Education
Date and Time: 1:30 PM – 3:30 Wednesday, July 1, 2020
Location: Silver
Organizer:

  • Dr. Bozenna Pasik-Duncan, University of Kansas
  • Dr. Linda Bushnell, University of Washington
  • Dr. Tyrone Duncan, University of Kansas
  • Dr. Anthony Rossiter, University of Sheffield

Program Committee:
  • AACC Technical Comnittee on Education
  • IFAC Technical Committee on Control Education
  • IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Control Education

Summary: This outreach event is designed to increase the general awareness of the importance of systems and control technology and its cross-disciplinary nature among students and teachers. Control is used in many common devices and systems: cell phones, computer hard drives, automobiles, and aircraft, but is usually hidden from view. The control field spans science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The success of all STEM disciplines depends on attracting the most gifted young people to science and engineering professions. Early exposure to middle and high school students and their teachers is a key factor. The goal of these outreach efforts is to promote an increased awareness of the importance and cross-disciplinary nature of control and systems technology.

Workshop activities include presentations, informal discussions, and the opportunity for teachers and students to meet passionate researchers and educators from academia and industry. The talks are designed to be educational, interactive, motivating and inspirational showing the excitement of STEM education.

Presentations:

Speaker(s): Dr. Daniel Abramovitch, Agilent Technologies
Title: What Is a Control System and Why Should I Care?
Abstract: After years of teaching coaching little league trying to explain control systems to biologist and computer scientist friends, I will try the ultimate test of explaining the topic to a group of bright and easily bored high school kids. We will go through examples of feedback in everyday life, and then tease out what is common to all these examples. We will talk about how the "control" is computed, even when we don't have a computer. And we will talk about the dreaded math of control systems, and explain why we use it and what it tells us. The talk will finish with some general lessons about science and engineering, and why anyone might want to learn these intense subjects.

Speaker(s): Dr. Dominique Duncan, University of Southern California
Title: Stepping Inside the Brain Using Virtual Reality
Abstract: The Epilepsy Bioinformatics Study for Antiepileptogenic Therapy (EpiBioS4Rx) is an ongoing international, multi-site Center Without Walls that is collecting data from moderate-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients and an animal model (Duncan et al., 2018a). We have been developing innovative methods to analyze the multimodal data with the goal to identify biomarkers of epileptogenesis, the development of epilepsy, after TBI. We are applying various machine learning methods as well as dimensionality reduction tools (Duncan et al., 2016), to the electrophysiology and imaging data. These theoretical techniques and associated models and optimization methods will be applicable not only to this dataset but to other multi-species or multi-domain transfer learning challenges that may arise in the context of health and medicine. We have partnered with several local high schools to hold educational workshops and research experience for K-12 students with this project. Furthermore, we have developed a virtual reality tool for visualizing neuroimaging data, including TBI lesions, and correcting segmentation errors that can be used as an educational neuroanatomy tool (Duncan et al., 2018b).

Speaker(s): Dr. Tembine Hamidou, New York University
Title: Risk-Aware Performance Metrics in STEM
Abstract: We live truly in a more and more interconnected and interactive world. In recent years, we have seen emerging technologies such as internet-of-everything, collective intelligence (including artificial intelligence), blockchains and next generation wireless networks. The quantities-of-interest in these systems involve uncertainties, volatilities and risk. In this talk we revisit how engineers and scientists incorporate, model, control and optimize societal problems under uncertainties.

Speaker(s): Dr. Richard M. Murray, California Institute of Technology
Title: How to Design a Self-Driving Car
Abstract: Building robots that can do things as well as humans has been the goal of scientists and engineers for decades. Despite what we see in the movies and on TV, getting a real robot to perform as well as a human can is still a challenge goal. Approximately 15 years ago, the US has sponsored a competition to spur advances in robotics, called the DARPA Grand Challenge. This competition paved the way for the advances that we see today in the development of autonomous cars. In this talk I will explain how these cars work and some of the engineering challenges that remain.

or

Title: Synthetic Biology: How to Program a Bacterium
Abstract: Synthetic biology is an emerging field that focuses on engineering biomolecular systems that are programmed via DNA to perform useful functions such as environmental bioremediation, diagnostics and therapeutics for human health, green manufacturing of chemicals, and production of engineered living materials and synthetic cells. In this talk I will give an introduction to synthetic biology and show how concept and tools from feedback control can help provide new methods for engineering biological systems.

Speaker(s): Dr. Lucy Pao, University of Colorado Boulder
Title: Efficient Wind Energy Systems—How Control Methods Can Enable a Clean Energy Future
Abstract: Wind energy is recognized worldwide as cost-effective and environmentally friendly and is among the fastest-growing sources of electrical energy. We will provide an overview of wind energy systems, discuss some of the challenges in the design and operation of wind turbines and wind farms, and highlight how control methods have improved the performance of these systems. We shall close by discussing continuing challenges and on-going and future research that can further facilitate the growth of wind energy.

Speaker(s): Dr. Ramla Qureshi, Women Engineers Pakistan (WEP)
Title: STEM is for Everyone!
Abstract: Within the domains of STEM education, numerous surveys across the globe have presented data where, up till grade 8, young girls have outperformed boys in science subjects. But fewer than 11% women worldwide are within engineering. This disparity begs to ask: what changes after grade 8th which makes the girls opt out of careers in engineering, technology, math, and physics? It is our belief that societal pressures and stereotypical fear of math and physics inhibits inclination to STEM education and consequent STEM careers for many young students across the globe. Planning and building games around math and physics problems helps dispel this fear, and encourages students to understand other, more complex systems in a fun manner that is easier to remember during exams and in general. The concept of game-based STEM learning sessions is not to teach rocket science in one day, rather it is to inculcate a sense of belonging within young students who feel inhibitions regarding their innate abilities in STEM subjects. This session is designed for middle school students.

Speaker Biographies:

Dr. Daniel Abramovitch earned degrees in Electrical Engineering from Clemson (BS) and Stanford (MS and Ph.D.). After a brief stay at Ford Aerospace, he worked at HP Labs for 11 1/2 years, studying control issues for optical and magnetic disk drives. He moved to Agilent Labs shortly after the spinoff from HP, where he has spent 20 years working on test and measurement systems. He is currently in Agilent's Mass Spectrometry Division working on improved real-time computational architectures for Agilent's mass spectrometers. Danny is a Senior Member of the IEEE and was Vice Chair for Industry and Applications for the 2004 American Control Conference (ACC), for Workshops at the 2006 ACC, for Special Sessions at the 2007 ACC, and for Industry and Applications for the 2009 ACC. He was Program Chair for the 2013 ACC and General Chair of the 2016 ACC in Boston. He has organized tutorial sessions on disk drives, atomic force microscopes, phase-locked loops, laser interferometry, and how business models and mechanics affect control design. He was Chair of the IEEE CSS History Committee from 2001 to 2010. Danny had the original idea for the clocking mechanism behind the DVD+RW optical disk format. He was on the team that prototyped Agilent's first 40Gbps Bit Error Rate Tester (BERT). He and Gene Franklin were awarded the 2003 IEEE Control Systems Magazine Outstanding Paper Award. He was a Keynote Lecturer at the 2015 MSC in Sydney. His recent work for Agilent was on high speed atomic force microscopes and high precision interferometers, and currently works on improving the real-time control, data collection, and signal processing chain on Agilent's Mass Spectrometers. He is part of the team that introduced the multi-award winning Ultivo Tandem Quad Mass Spec in 2017. He is the holder of over 20 patents and has published over 50 reviewed technical papers.

Dr. Dominique Duncan is an assistant professor of neurology at the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging of the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute. Prior to her current position she was a postdoctoral scholar at the Mathematics Department at the University of California, Davis, a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering from Yale University in 2013 and a BS in Mathematics from the University of Chicago in 2007 as well as a BA in Polish Literature and minor in Computational Neuroscience. During her collaborating with neurologists and neuroscientists from the Yale University School of Medicine, and mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists. She is a recipient of a University of Chicago Scholarship, Yale University Faculty of Engineering Fellowship, NSF REU scholarship, summer undergraduate program in engineering research scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, several travel awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) Travel Award. She is passionate about teaching international students and about community and outreach service. She has an established record of holding leadership positions that include being the Chair of the University of California, Davis Postdoctoral Scholars Association, Council Member in the Stanford University Postdoctoral Association, senator representing engineering for the Yale University Graduate and Professional Student Senate, President of the University of Chicago Polish American Student Association, Chair of the University of Chicago Committee on Recognized Student Organizations, University of Chicago Student Government Executive Committee member, American Automatic Control Council (AACC) TC on Education member, IEEE Control System Society (CSS) TC on Control Education member, and appointed member of IFAC TC on Control Education. She has been a frequent speaker on "Math & Epilepsy" at workshops for elementary, middle and high school students and teachers.

Dr. Tembine Hamidou received the M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from Ecole Polytechnique (Palaiseau, Paris, France) in 2006 and the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from University of Avignon in 2009. His current research interests include evolutionary games, mean-field-type games and applications. In December 2014, Tembine received the IEEE ComSoc Outstanding Young Researcher Award for his promising research activities for the benefit of the society. He was the recipient of 10 best article awards in the applications of game theory. He is author of the book on "Distributed Strategic Learning for Wireless Engineers" (published by CRC Press, Taylor & Francis 2012), and co-author of the book "Game Theory and Learning in Wireless Networks" (Elsevier Academic Press). Tembine has been co-organizer of several scientific meetings on game theory in networking, wireless communications, smart energy and transportation systems. He is a Next Einstein Fellow.

Dr. Richard Murray received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from California Institute of Technology in 1985 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988 and 1991, respectively. He is currently the Thomas E. and Doris Everhart Professor of Control and Dynamical Systems and Bioengineering at Caltec. Murray's research is in the application of feedback and control to network systems with applications in biology and autonomy. Current projects include design of safety-critical control systems and synthetic biology.

Dr. Lucy Pao is the Palmer Endowed Chair Professor in the Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering Department at the University of Colorado Boulder. She earned B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Her research has primarily focused on engineering control systems, with applications ranging from atomic force microscopes to multi-megawatt wind energy systems. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC). Selected recent awards include the 2012 IEEE Control Systems Magazine Outstanding Paper Award (with K. Johnson), the 2015 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Journal on Control and Optimization Best Paper Prize (with J. Marden and H. P. Young), the 2017 Control Engineering Practice Award from the American Automatic Control Council, the Scientific Award 2017 from the European Academy of Wind Energy, and the 2019 Nyquist Lecturer Award from the ASME Dynamic Systems & Control Division. Selected recent and current professional society activities include being a Fellow of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (2009-present), General Chair of the 2013 American Control Conference, member of the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) Board of Governors (2011-2013 and 2015), IEEE CSS Fellow Nominations Chair (2016-2018), member of the IFAC Fellow Selection Committee (2014-2017 and 2017-2020), and member of the IFAC Executive Board (2017-2020).

Dr. Ramla Qureshi, CEO of Women Engineers Pakistan (WEP), started WEP in 2013 as part of her unwavering commitment to empower women in STEM disciplines. She also asks for male participation at their university chapters. structural and earthquake engineering working on her thesis in structural damage, devising new methods for testing structural resilience against fire and earthquake hazards. WEP calls upon men to advocate for their friends and classmates–and the future. Her skills and areas of expertise include encouraging women and young professionals to pursue engineering. She received her B.S. from National University of Sciences and Technology in Pakistan. She is a Fulbright Scholar and PhD student in Citizen's Foundation-school initiative in Pakistan. Ramla was nominated by the University of Buffalo's School of Engineering She is currently involved with ERI, ACI student member, ASCE, Engineer-in-Training. She is drawn to and passionate about charitable organizations such as and Applied Sciences to represent the school at the Advancement of Science and Association of Public and Land-grant Universities' (AAAS) Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering (CASE) workshop in Washington DC.







Thursday Noon Special Sessions


Control Design for SuperCruise Automated Driving: Systems, Algorithms, Challenges and Solutions

Sponsor: General Motors
Date and Time: 12:00 – 1:30 PM Thursday, July 2, 2020
Location: Room 51

Summary: Automated vehicles are computers that perform several functions necessary to understand the world and make driving decisions. Developing such systems is challenging, since driving is a multi-variable, multi-objective, nonlinear and sometimes uncertain task, in which multiple agents including drivers, pedestrians, devices and environment interact in real-time.

This talk provides a technical review of lateral controls in GM's SuperCruise, the industry's first hands-free driving technology for the highway. Several aspects of the system are discussed, including systems and components, hardware redundancy to ensure safety, hardware/software integration, and technical aspects in vehicle dynamics, sensing, fusion, path planning and controls.

Specific case studies are provided which highlight application of controls techniques to develop various functionalities that enable operation of SuperCruise.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Reza Zarringhalam is Global Technical Lead for Lateral Controls at General Motors Canada Technical Center. He is currently leading the design of advanced lateral controls software at GM for various features including SuperCruise. Before joining GM Canada, Reza had more than 10 years of R&D experience in controls and automotive industry, including his MSc research on applications of AI for automated driving at K.N.T.U, Iran; and his PhD research on fault-tolerant estimation of vehicle states at University of Waterloo, Canada. Reza has made numerous contributions through patents and publications, is a reviewer of multiple international journals and has extensive teaching experience in Controls and Mechatronics. He is passionate about technology and innovation to build a better future, today.



Bridging the Theory-Practice Gap in Robotics on a Massive Scale in Georgia Tech's Robotarium Room 50

Sponsor: Mathworks
Date and Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM, Thursday, July 2, 2020
Location: Room 50

Summary: The Robotarium is a remotely accessible swarm robotics lab that allows users from all over the world to upload control code, written in MATLAB, and run experiments. Since its official launch in August 2017, over 5000 remote experiments have been conducted by users from all continents (except Antarctica). The impetus behind the Robotarium project is to provide broad, democratized access to a world-class research facility, and users span the gambit from robotics researchers to middle-school students. This talk will discuss the technical challenges associated with the Robotarium as well as a lessons learned in remote-access experimentation.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Magnus Egerstedt, Steve W. Chaddick School Chair and Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.



Thursday Afternoon Special Sessions


Promoting Access for Under-represented Groups in STEM Graduate Disciplines

Date and Time: 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM, Thursday, July 2, 2020
Location: Silver
Organizer: Dr. Irina Dolinskaya

Summary: This session consists of four presentations that addresses successful academic and professional practices that support completion of a STEM graduate education and transition to the professoriate for under-represented groups.

A motivation for the session is that the demographics in the U.S. is changing but noticeably, the number of graduate degrees in STEM disciplines remain unpopulated by this change. To meet this rising change, professional societies and academic institutions must embrace systematic and thoughtful changes in how access is provided, how practices are implemented, and what policies are crafted.

This session is intended to serve three purposes: (i) present the challenges faced by under-represented groups at the graduate level, (ii) provide examples of programs and/or procedures that bolster graduate education in STEM disciplines, and (iii) have an open dialogue about the difficulties of instituting systemic change at the professional society, academic institution, college, and department levels.

Outline of the session:

  1. Dr. Karlene Hoo (Gonzaga University), "Brief Opening Remarks to Introduce the Topic"
  2. Dr. Bozenna Pasik-Duncan (University of Kansas), "STEM Education of Tomorrow"
    A collaborative effort integrating scholarship, teaching, learning and broader impacts is the key to a success in STEM education. This collaborative effort needs to include academia, industry, government as well as teachers, parents, students and scholars. By working together as partners who are all learners in the process of STEM education, we can make a difference. Best practices in this effort are shared.
  3. Dr. Martha Grover (Georgia Institute of Technology), "Graduate Training for Equality in Under-represented Academic Leadership"
    The need to fund students on research grants may provide an unnecessary barrier to retention of PhD students from non-traditional backgrounds. Here we discuss the details of a program in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech, funded by ACS-Bridge, to expand the number of students from under-represented groups earning a PhD in the chemical sciences. The MS thesis program is utilized as a bridge from the BS to the PhD through modifications in timeline and sequencing, as well as additional mentoring.
  4. Dr. Karlene Hoo (Gonzaga University), "Pathways to Support STEM Graduate Education for Indigenous Communities"
    The NSF AGEP (Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) PNW COSMOS (Pacific NorthWest Collaborative Opportunities for Success in Mentoring of Students) Alliance's project was to address the scarcity of American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) graduate students in STEM programs. In this presentation, two mentoring frameworks to promote retention and support of AI/AN graduate students will be described. The NSF-funded project resulted in the publication "Indigenous Communities and Access to Graduate Degrees in STEM," 2019 (eds: Hoo & Windchief) New Directions for Higher Education, No. 187.
  5. Dr. Bonnie Ferri (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Leslie Sharp (Georgia Institute of Technology), "Hiring and Supporting a Diverse Faculty"
    This interactive session will explore some of the issues, challenges, and opportunities for hiring and supporting a diverse faculty in STEM disciplines. What are factors that influence the decision of under-represented groups to apply for and consider faculty positions? What are some policies, practices, and programs that support a healthy and productive culture among a diverse population? Do our promotion and advancement practices need retuning? What contributions can a professional society have to support success? Finally, what can each of us do individually to support diversity, equity, and inclusion in the faculty ranks?

    Note: Bonnie Ferri will conduct the session. Leslie Sharp (Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Faculty Development, and CEO of the Library) will help to prepare the presentation materials and activities but will not be present at the session.

Speaker Biographies:

Dr. Bozenna Pasik-Duncan received M.S. degree in mathematics from University of Warsaw (Poland), and Ph.D. and D.Sc. (Habilitation Doctorate) degrees from Warsaw School of Economics (Poland). She is Professor of Mathematics; Courtesy Professor of EECS & AE; Investigator at ITTC; Affiliate Faculty at Center of Computational Biology, and Chancellors Club Teaching Professor at University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS). She is 2017-2018 IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Global Chair, founder of IEEE CSS Women in Control, founder and faculty advisor of Student Chapters of Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) and Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) at KU, founder and coordinator of KU and IEEE CSS Outreach Programs, a Life Fellow of IEEE, and Fellow of IFAC. She is recipient of many awards that include IREX Fellow, NSF Career Advancement Award, Louise Hay Award, Polish Ministry of Higher Education Award, H.O.P.E. Award, Kemper Fellowship, IEEE Educational Activities Board Meritorious Achievement Award, the IEEE Third Millennium Medal and IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Member Award. She is inducted to the KU Women's Hall of Fame. Her broad research interests are primarily in stochastic adaptive control and its applications to science and engineering, and in STEM education.

Dr. Karlene Hoo received her a B.S. degree from the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN). All her degrees are in chemical engineering. She is currently, Dean of the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Gonzaga University (Spokane, WA). She held prior academic administrative positions at Texas Tech University (Lubbock, TX) and at Montana State University (Bozeman, MT). She has government experience with the National Science Foundation (Engineering Directorate), NASA Johnson Space Center, and Sandia National Laboratories. She also has industrial experience with Exxon and DuPont. In 2009, she served as the General Chair of the American Control Conference (St Louis, MO). Her research interests are in sustainable chemical process designs, cardiovascular research, biofuel technologies, and graduate STEM education.

Dr. Bonnie Ferri received her a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN), her M.S. degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton (Princeton, NJ), and her Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA). She is currently the vice provost for Graduate Education and Faculty Development at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests are in embedded control systems, engineering education, and real-time computing. She has received many honors and awards including the 2017 IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award and the 2016 Regent's Award for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. She was the co-chair of a campus-wide commission at Georgia Tech on the future of higher education, an invited speaker at a National Academy of Engineering workshop on education, and a keynote speaker at the 2019 IFAC Advances in Control Education Symposium. She is the General Chair of the 2022 American Control Conference to be held In Atlanta, GA.

Dr. Martha Grover received her a B.S. degree from the University of Illinois (Champaign, IL) and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA). She is Professor and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech and co-leads the new Graduate Training for Equality in Underrepresented Academic Leadership Program funded by the American Chemical Society through the NSF INCLUDES Network. Her research interests are in control of molecular organization, with applications in feedback control of colloidal crystallization for photonic materials, chemical evolution in the origins of life, modeling and control of pharmaceutical and nuclear waste crystallization, and process-structure-property relationships in polymer organic electronics. Martha is the Program Chair of the 2020 American Control Conference and the General Chair for ACC in 2024. She also is the incoming chair for the AIChE Computing and Systems Technology Division and the IEEE CSS Liaison to the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) Committee.



Quantum Information Systems: Communication, Control and Computing

Date and Time: 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM, Thursday, July 2, 2020
Location: Gold
Organizers: Drs. Mark Balas and James Steck

Summary: Quantum Information Systems and quantum computing are developing rapidly and will have a profound effect on Modeling, Operation, and Control of aerospace systems. Aerospace engineers need to be more aware of the new quantum systems as there is already a growing need for quantum systems engineers to deal with these new issues and to develop workable quantum machines and integrate them into the existing systems technology. In this session we will bring together prominent researchers currently working in communication and control of quantum systems and quantum computing.

Presentations:

Speaker(s): Dr. Matthew James, Australian National University; Dr. Valeri Ugrinovskii, University of New South Wales Canberra
Title: Applying Wiener Filtering to Quantum Communication Systems
Abstract: Quantum communication systems involve the transmission of classical and/or quantum information through a channel. Quantum key distribution is a well-known example, with significant security implications. Aspirational proposals for a quantum internet have been emerging, where a coherent network would allow the distribution of quantum states, including entangled states. Quantum signals, just like their classical counterparts, suffer loss and distortion as they pass through channels. This talk will examine the underlying problem of compensating for loss and distortion at a level below the abstraction of qubits and coding. In particular, we develop a general methodology that allows for the design of quantum filters that extends Wiener's well-known classical methods. This methodology involves a constrained nonlinear optimization problem, where the physical realization requirements of the filter impose non-trivial constraints. The talk will summarize the general features of the approach, and discuss some examples. Some recent experimental results will also be discussed.

Speaker(s): Dr. Ashkan Balouchi, Louisiana State University; Dr. Kurt Jacobs, University of Massachusetts Boston
Title: Coherent vs. Measurement-Based Feedback for Controlling A Single Qubit
Abstract: We compare the performance of continuous coherent feedback using a single-qubit controller to that of continuous measurement-based feedback for controlling a single qubit. Here the basic dynamical resource is the ability to couple the system to a traveling-wave field (for example, a transmission line) via a system observable. To obtain a fair comparison we acknowledge that the amplification involved in measurement-based control allows the controller to use macroscopic fields to apply feedback forces to the system, so it is natural to allow these feedback forces to be much larger than the mesoscopic coupling to the transmission line that mediates both the measurement for measurement-based control and the coupling to the mesoscopic controller for coherent control. Interestingly our numerical results indicate that under this assumption coherent feedback is able to exactly match the performance of measurement-based feedback given ideal controllers. We will also discuss various properties of, and control mechanisms for, coherent feedback networks.

Speaker(s): Drs. Hideo Mabuchi, Edwin Ng and Ryotatsu Yanagimoto, Edward L. Ginzton Laboratory, Stanford University; Dr. Tatsuhiro Onodera, NTT Physics & Informatics Laboratories
Title: Quantum Feedback and the Coherent Ising Machine
Abstract: The Coherent Ising Machine (CIM) computational architecture is being investigated as a promising hybrid opto-electronic approach for solving hard instances of nonlinear optimization problems. Large-scale prototypes have been built in industrial laboratories and are being benchmarked against both conventional heuristic algorithms and commercial quantum annealers; current academic research focuses on elucidating the fundamental role of quantum physics in the operational principles of CIM and on exploring generalizations of the CIM architecture that could more substantially leverage quantum resources such as entanglement and interference of optimization trajectories. In this talk I will overview of the key role of real-time feedback in current and future CIM architectures, discuss some quantum input-output modeling challenges for CIM-type systems operating with broadband optical signals, and describe a novel feedback-based scheme for entanglement generation in next-generation CIMs.

Speaker(s): Drs. Murphy Yuezhen Niu and Vadim Smelyanskiy, Google
Title: Multi-qubit Gate in Frequency Tunable Xmon Qubits
Abstract: We propose a framework for realizing Multi-qubit gate using top-down design harnessing the structure of the system Hamiltonian energy levels. This framework allows us to design three-qubit and four-qubit gates that are important for quantum simulation and quantum error correction. We discuss the main challenges to be overcome in the practical realization of here proposed multi-qubit gate.

Speaker(s): Drs. James Steck, Elizabeth Behrman, and Nathan Thompson, Wichita State University
Title: Machine Learning for Programming Quantum Computers
Abstract: We apply machine learning to "program" quantum computers, both in simulation and in experimental hardware. A major difficulty in quantum computing is developing effective algorithms that can be programmed on a quantum device. Our approach is to apply machine learning to learn the quantum computer parameters that will yield the desired computation instead of choosing pre-made quantum gates to do the processing. As a proof of concept, we apply machine learning to a 16-qubit quantum gate computer developed by IBM and to a topological quantum computer by Microsoft. Preliminary results are shown of machine learning results both in software simulation and on the actual IBM quantum hardware. Microsoft results are shown only using their simulation as hardware is still being built. A second demonstration is to then port quantum machine learning to a large SQUID array of 2000 qubits originally designed to solve binary optimization problems via quantum annealing. To demonstrate quantum machine learning on this larger scale, it is programmed via machine learning to anneal to various entangled and partially entangled states; investigating a basic building block of general quantum computing. Simulation results are presented along with a method to demonstrate in hardware on a superconducting flux qubit quantum annealing machine housed at the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL) at NASA's Advanced Supercomputing facility. Targeted entangled states are the relatively easy GHZ states, the EPR as well as the more difficult W and other states. Using machine learning instead of programming paves the way to greatly expanding the quantum computing capabilities of quantum computing hardware currently available.

Speaker(s): Dr. Mark Balas, Texas A&M University
Title: Reduction of Decoherence in Quantum Information Systems Using Direct Adaptive Control of Infinite Dimensional Systems
Abstract: Using Quantum Mechanical systems to store and retrieve information and use it in quantum computing is a new aspect of physical science. These quantum systems are inherently infinite dimensional systems and their dynamic behavior is not well known. What must be controlled, are the quantum gates that do all the computational work but should remain reversible because the gates are expected to be unitary operators in the Hilbert space of quantum system states. These gates will suffer some decoherence of this unitarity because they are open systems and subject to interaction/entanglement with other related quantum systems. Consequently, they will not operate as the ideal systems they are expected to be and will produce significant errors. Direct adaptive control does not use detailed information about the gates, but can still be used to reduce decoherence. Our overall direction is on using our research in adaptive control of infinite dimensional systems to explore how these feedback control ideas in conjunction with quantum gates and quantum error correction can reduce decoherence in quantum information and computing. It has been shown that there are decoherence -free subspaces in the Hilbert space of quantum states This presentation will focus on our current approach using adaptive control of infinite dimensional systems to guide quantum systems into these decoherence-free subspaces.



Getting Funded by NSF: Proposal Preparation and the Merit Review Process

Sponsor: National Science Foundation
Date and Time: 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM, Thursday, July 2, 2020
Location: Denver
Organizer: Dr. Irina Dolinskaya

Summary: So, you think you have a great research idea, now how do you get funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to do the work? A well-scoped and written proposal is instrumental to successful submission. This session targets junior faculty and researchers who might be new to NSF and describes detailed guidelines and practical advice for proposal preparation. The presenter will go over NSF review process and Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria, as well as share most common mistakes made by the Primary Investigators when submitting a proposal. Question-and-answer session will follow the presentation.

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Irina Dolinskaya is a Program Director at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the Division of Civil, Mechanical & Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI). Dr. Dolinskaya services Dynamics, Control and Systems Diagnostics (DCSD) program, as well as National Robotics Initiative (NRI 2.0) and Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) NSF's 10 Big Ideas. Prior to joining NSF, Irina Dolinskaya was a faculty in the Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences department at Northwestern University. She obtained M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, and B.S. degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Florida. Dr. Dolinskaya's research is in the field of transportation science and logistics with focus on adaptive modeling and solution approaches to integrate dynamic real-time information. Her current primary applications are in humanitarian logistics, optimal vessel performance, and electric vehicle routing. Irina Dolinskaya is the winner of the INFORMS Transportation Science & Logistics Society Dissertation Prize and the 2008 recipient of the Bonder Scholarship for Applied Operations Research in Military Applications.



Student Career Advising Session

Date and Time: 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM, Thursday, July 2, 2020
Location: Gold
Organizers: Ning Tian, Ting Cai, Dr. Alireza Goshtasbi

Summary: The session will be rotating roundtable discussions. The discussion panel features a diverse group of accomplished professionals from academia, national labs and industry. They will share insights and provide advice based on their successful careers in their respective fields. Students are encouraged to come with specific questions or simply listen in. Join us for an opportunity to network and learn more about shaping your career. Light refreshments will be provided.

Organizer Biographies:

Ning Tian is a Ph.D. candidate working with Dr. Huazhen Fang at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. His research interests include control theory and its application to advanced battery management. He is currently a Student Liaison of the ASME DSCD Energy Systems Technical Committee. He received the B.Eng. and M.Sc. degrees in Thermal Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnic University, Xi'an, China, in 2012 and 2015, respectively.

Ting Cai is a Ph.D. candidate working with Dr. Jason Siegel and Dr. Anna Stefanopoulou at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on Li-ion battery control and safety, specifically the modeling and detection of battery faults. He is a recipient of the Energy Systems Technical Committee Best Paper Award in the 2018 ASME Dynamic Systems and Control Conference. He currently serves as a student liaison of the ASME DSCD Energy Systems Technical Committee. Ting received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University in 2016.

Dr. Alireza Goshtasbi is a Research Engineer at Ford Motor Company. His research interests include modeling, estimation, and control of electrochemical energy systems with special focus on fuel cells. Alireza served as a Student Liaison for the ASME DSCD Energy Systems Technical Committee from 2017 to 2019. He completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan in 2019, where he also obtained his MS in Applied Mathematics and MS in Mechanical Engineering in 2019 and 2016, respectively.

Panelists:

Dr. Jason B. Siegel received his Bachelors of Electrical Engineering Summa Cum Laude from the University of Michigan in 2004 and Electrical Engineering Systems Ph.D. in 2010. After a two year post-doc, he joined the faculty as an Assistant Research Scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan in 2012. His research focuses on physics based modeling and control of energy storage and conversion systems including lithium-ion batteries and Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cells. Dr. Siegel was part of the team that received the 2016 IEEE Control Systems Technology Award, "for the development of an advanced battery management system accounting for electro-thermo-mechanical phenomena." He has co/authored more than 30 journal articles with an h-index of 16, and a chapter in the control systems handbook on the application of model predictive control to fuel cells. Dr. Siegel serves as the chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Automotive Control.

Dr. Hamid Ossareh obtained his BASc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto in 2008, and MASc (EE), MS (Mathematics), and PhD (EE) degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2010, 2012, and 2013, respectively. He was a researcher at Ford Research and Advanced Engineering from 2013 to 2016, where he investigated advanced control of automotive powertrains. Since 2016, he has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Vermont (UVM). His research interests lie in the area of control and, more specifically, constrained control, stochastic control, and nonlinear control with applications in automotive, aerospace, and power systems. He holds more than 35 patents and has been an author on more than 32 peer-reviewed publications, and has been a recipient of numerous awards, including the Chief Engineer's award and the Ford Technical Achievement award from Ford Motor Company, and the Faculty of the Year and Inventor of the Year awards from the IEEE GMS. He is the founding chair of the IEEE Control Systems Society Chapter of Vermont, an Associate Editor for the journal of Control Engineering Practice, and a member on the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE CSS.

Dr. Helen Durand is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Wayne State University. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from UCLA, and upon graduation joined the Materials & Processes Engineering Department as an engineer at Aerojet Rocketdyne for two and a half years. She earned her M.S. in Chemical Engineering from UCLA in 2014 and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from UCLA in 2017, and subsequently started at Wayne State. She received the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator award, and her work has also received support from the National Science Foundation. She received a Faculty Research Excellence Award within the College of Engineering at Wayne State University and is serving as the Next-Gen Manufacturing Sessions Area Chair for the 2020 Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Her research interests are in the area of process systems engineering with a focus on process control.

Dr. Neera Jain is the Principal Investigator of the Jain Research Laboratory. She joined the School of Mechanical Engineering and Ray W. Herrick Laboratories at Purdue University as an assistant professor in January 2015. She has authored more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles on the topics of dynamic modeling and control of thermal energy systems. From May 2013 through May 2014, Dr. Jain was a visiting member of the research staff in the Mechatronics Group at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, MA where she designed advanced control algorithms for HVAC systems. Before earning her doctorate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013, she earned her S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 and her M.S. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009, both in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Jain is a recipient of the Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Fellowship (2010-2013) and the ASME Graduate Teaching Fellowship (2011-2012).

Dr. Masoud Abbaszadeh received the B.Sc. degree from the Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2000, the M.Sc. degree from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2002, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 2008, all in electrical and computer engineering. He is currently a Senior Research Engineer at GE Research, Niskayuna, NY, USA and an Adjunct Professor at the ECSE Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA. From 2011 to 2013, he was a Senior Research Engineer at the United Technologies Research Center, East Hartford, CT, USA. From 2008 to 2011, he was with Maplesoft, Waterloo, ON, Canada. He was the Principal Developer of MapleSim Control Design Toolbox and was a member of a research team working on Maplesoft-Toyota joint projects. Dr. Abbaszadeh is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology and a member of IEEE Control Systems Society Conference Editorial Board. His current research interests include estimation and detection, robust and nonlinear filtering, and statistical machine learning with applications such as cyber-physical resilience and autonomous systems. He has published over 80 peer-reviewed papers and has over 40 issued/pending patents.

Mr. Rajiv Singh holds degrees in Aerospace (1998) and Mechanical (2000) Engineering and is currently a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at Northeastern University. His current research is focused on convex methods for nonlinear system identification. Since 2000, he has been with MathWorks where he leads the development of data based modeling software. He has been the lead developer of the System Identification Toolbox since 2010. He has also led the development effort behind launching the Predictive Maintenance Toolbox in 2018. Rajiv has authored numerous papers in the area of system identification and statistical modeling and hold 3 patents in related areas.

Dr. Leo H. Chiang is Technology Director at Dow Inc., leading Chemometrics and AI implementations for Manufacturing. Leo has developed and implemented several data analytics techniques to solve complex manufacturing problems, resulting in 11 Dow Manufacturing Technology Center Awards. In 2016 he received the Dow R&D Excellence in Science Award in recognition of his scientific achievement in industrial research. Leo has a B.S. degree from University of Wisconsin at Madison and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all in Chemical Engineering. Leo has contributed to over 40 externally refereed journal/proceedings papers and has given over 100 conference presentations and university lectures. Leo has co-authored two books published by Springer Verlag. His textbook Fault Detection and Diagnosis in Industrial Systems is available in English and Chinese and has received over 2,200 citations according to Google Scholar.

Leo has a long history of supporting American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), having served as 2014-2016 Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) director, 2016 CAST 10E programming chair, 2017-2018 spring meeting program chair (MPC), and recently elected to serve the 2019-2022 Executive Board of the Program Committee (EBPC). Leo was instrumental in setting up the Big Data Analytics Topical Conference (2015 to 2017) and Industry 4.0 Topical Conference (2018-2020) at the AIChE spring meeting. He was recognized by the AIChE with the 2016 Herbert Epstein Award for his leadership on Big Data Analytics technical programming and 2016 Computing Practice Award for his world-class leadership in the development and application of methodologies in analytics for batch and continuous processes known as Big Data. Leo is also active in the broader engineering and control community, currently serves as 2019-2021 Computer Aids for Chemical Engineering (CACHE) trustee, 2021 International Symposium on Advanced Control of Chemical Processes (ADCHEM) industry co-chair, and 2022 American Control Conference (ACC) vice chair for industrial applications.

Dr. Jennifer King (Annoni) received her PhD in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics from the University of Minnesota in 2016. She is currently a research engineer at the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) at the National Wind Technology Center. Her research spans from engineering to policy. Her expertise includes control systems, flow control, system identification, and reduced-order modeling with application to wind farm control, with specific work done on mode decomposition, optimal estimation and control, robust control, and energy policy.

Dr. Alexander Scheinker received a MA in mathematics in 2008 and a PhD in nonlinear adaptive control theory in 2012 at the University of California, San Diego. Alex spent the last two years of his PhD as a Graduate Researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and was hired as a staff member with the RF Control Group in 2011 where he continues theoretical and applied control theory research. While traditional Extremum Seeking (ES) approaches were for the optimization of the unknown outputs of known stable/controlled systems, Alex developed a new bounded form of ES for use as a direct feedback for the stabilization, optimization and control of unknown and unstable time-varying nonlinear systems. Alex has combined the ES feedback control method with machine learning (ML) techniques for adaptive ML of time varying systems. Alex has demonstrated this method in hardware for various particle accelerator applications: electron beam orbit control at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory SPEAR3 and the Brookhaven National Laboratory NSLS-II particle accelerator light sources, beam loss minimization at the LANL LANSCE proton linear accelerator, automatic longitudinal phase space control and average pulse energy output maximization at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Linac Coherent Light Source and the European X-ray free electron laser, trajectory and emittance control at CERN's plasma wakefield acceleration project AWAKE, and non-invasive longitudinal phase space diagnostics at the FACET plasma wakefield accelerator at SLAC national accelerator laboratory.

Dr. David Schoenwald is a Principal Member of the Technical Staff in the Electric Power Systems Research Department at Sandia National Laboratories. Dr. Schoenwald focuses on control system design to improve dynamic stability of electric power systems. He also develops performance standards for grid-scale energy storage applications. Before joining Sandia, he was with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he designed control systems for manufacturing applications. He was also an adjunct assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he taught a graduate course on nonlinear control systems. Dr. Schoenwald received an R&D 100 award in 2017 for development of an inter-area oscillation damping controller for the western North American power grid. He received the 2017 Outstanding Engineer Award of the Albuquerque Section of the IEEE. He served as Technical Co-Chair of the 2017 Electrical Energy Storage Applications & Technologies (EESAT) Conference. Dr. Schoenwald received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from The Ohio State University.