Plenary Speakers J3C 2025

Frank Allgöwer

Director of the Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control at the University of Stuttgart in Germany
Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control
University of Stuttgart
Stuttgart, Germany.

Frank Allgöwer is director of the Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. His current research interests are to develop new methods for data-based control, optimization-based control and networked control.
Frank has served the scientific community through various roles including Vice-President of the German Research Foundation DFG (2012-2020), President of the International Federation of Automatic Control (2017-2020), Editor for the journal Automatica (2001-2015) and Series Editor for the Springer Lecture Notes in Control and Information Science (since 2008) and many more. He has published over 700 scientific articles with almost 40'000 citations and received several awards for his research including the IFAC Outstanding Service Award, the IEEE CSS Distinguished Member Award, the State Teaching Award of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, and the Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Title: Tick, Tock... or Not: Intelligent Event Triggering in Control Systems

Abstract:
In traditional control systems, actions are typically triggered by the tick of a clock --irrespective of whether change is needed. But in today's era of intelligent, interconnected, and resource-constrained systems, why should control remain tied to rigid periodicity? Event-triggered and self-triggered control offer a paradigm shift: close the loop only when necessary. These feedback strategies make system behavior the driver of computation and communication, enabling more efficient use of bandwidth, energy, and processing—without sacrificing performance and systems theoretic properties like stability.
This talk will explore the foundations and frontiers of event-based control in the context of cyber-physical systems, networked control, and automation networks. We will discuss how triggering mechanisms can be designed and analyzed to balance control quality with resource usage, and how such methods intersect with real-time computation, distributed systems, and intelligent sensing. A special focus will be on systematic analysis and design frameworks that allow to guarantee properties like stability, constraint satisfaction or performance.
We will also highlight emerging cross-disciplinary connections, like neuromorphic computing, event-based perception, and human-machine collaboration in automation. Finally, we will reflect on the open theoretical challenges and practical barriers to adoption -- offering a vision for how event-based control can help shape the future of autonomous, adaptive, and communication-aware systems.

Dongil “Dan” Cho

Chief Scientific Officer, RS Automation
President, International Federation of Automatic Control
Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University

Education:
- B.S.M.E. Carnegie Mellon University, 1980.
- M.S.M.E., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1984.
- Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988.

Work:
- Professor, MAE, Princeton University, 1987-1993
- Professor, ECE, Seoul National University, 1993-2023.
- Chief Scientific Officer, RS Automation Company, 2023- .

Society:
- President, Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
(ICROS), 2017.
- President, International Federation of Automatic Control
(IFAC), 2023-2026.

Major Awards:
- ICROS Award, 2016.
- Korea Robot Award, Prime Minister Citation, 2018.
- Korean Government Service Merit Medal, 2023.

Title: Smart-Tuning Control Platform

Abstract:
There have been many claims regarding the origins of the servo system, yet it is widely recognized that servo technology has played a pivotal role in the emergence of modern automated manufacturing. At present, servo systems largely determine the performance boundaries of industrial robots and motion control systems. Nevertheless, the majority of industrial servos continue to rely on classical control methodologies, to which filters, disturbance observers, gain-scheduling techniques, and anti-windup strategies are added in an ad hoc fashion. Such an approach inevitably introduces strong coupling among the sub-controllers, which in turn complicates both controller design and parameter tuning. Consequently, achieving advanced performance specifications requires the expertise of highly experienced field engineers. We have developed a smart-tuning control platform that integrates advanced control methods within a unique decoupled framework, ensuring both stability and robustness while enabling simplified tuning - what we call “smart-tuning”. This platform has demonstrated exceptional performance in various benchmark testbeds and has been successfully deployed in numerous state-of-the-art manufacturing lines.

Maria Prandini

Full Professor, Politecnico di Milano

Maria Prandini received the Ph.D. degree in Information Technology from the University of Brescia, Italy, in 1998. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley from 1998 to ​2000. In 2002, she joined Politecnico di Milano, where she is currently full professor in Automatic Control and she has been Chair of the Automation and Control Engineering Study Program for two terms from 2019 to 2024.

She was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 2020 and received the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) Distinguished Member award in 2018. In 2017, she was August-Wilhelm Scheer Visiting Professor and Honorary fellow of the TUM Institute for Advanced Studied. She was nominated Visiting Professor in Engineering at the University of Oxford for the triennium 2022-2025.

She has been active in the IEEE CSS, the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), contributing to their activities in different roles. She is IFAC President-elect for the triennium 2023-26. Previously, she was Vice-President for conference activities for IFAC (2020-23) and IEEE CSS (2016 and 2017), and a member of SIGBED Board of Directors (2019-21). Her research interests include stochastic hybrid systems, randomized algorithms, distributed and data-driven optimization, multi-agent systems, and the application of control theory to transportation and energy systems.

Title: Optimal Operation of Complex Systems: A Scalable Data-Driven Framework

Abstract:
The increasing complexity of emerging applications in the energy domain calls for optimization frameworks that are both scalable and robust to uncertainty.
Motivated by these applications, in this talk we present a comprehensive framework that leverages distributed/decentralized computing architectures and data-driven methods to address key challenges arising from large-scale dimensionality, multi-agent interactions, data-informed uncertainty, and, possibly, even integer decision variables that naturally arise in cyber-physical systems.