inControl

ep2 - Florian Dörfler: Power is nothing without control

May 16, 2022 Alberto Padoan Season 1 Episode 2
inControl
ep2 - Florian Dörfler: Power is nothing without control
Show Notes

This episode features an interview with Florian Dörfler, who is an Associate Professor at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich, Switzerland.  We discuss several topics, including his personal research trajectory, the influence of machine learning on control, future challenges in control theory, among others. Check out Florian's website here: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~floriand/

Outline

00:00 - Intro 
01:03 - Personal research trajectory
05:57 - Influence of machine learning on control
07:52 - Why doing research in control?
09:51 - What would you change in control? 
11:36 - Where is the field heading?
14:20 - Favourite theorem in control theory
16:20 - Vision: what would you like to achieve?
17:03 - Influential figures
19:17 - Sociology and control
21:23 - What would you do if you were a student today?

Episode links

Florian's website: http://people.ee.ethz.ch/~floriand/
Gerschgorin theorem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershgorin_circle_theorem
Synchronization paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.1212134110
Hamming - "A stroke of genius": https://www.mccurley.org/advice/hamming_advice.html 

Podcast info

Podcast website: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/incontrol/id1624068002
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7dZvt77XNtHxyrFqM8YTwf
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Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl83hwBSVRLYj2NWS08P9bg/featured
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InControl-podcast-114303337936834
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IncontrolP
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/incontrol_podcast/
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/incontrolpodcast/

Acknowledgments and sponsors

This episode was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research on «Dependable, ubiquitous automation», which you can check here:
https://nccr-automation.ch/nccr-automation

The podcast benefits from the help of an incredibly talented and passionate team. Special thanks to Arian Bastani, Benjamin Sawicki, Elise Cahard, Florian Dorfler, Frederik Banis, John Lygeros, ETH studio (Philipp Zumbrunnen), and mirrorlake studio (Roman Frischknecht). The support of the Swiss National Science Foundation is also gratefully acknowledged. 

Music was composed by A New Element.

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