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In this episode I got to chat with the incredibly wonderful Dr Keyan Miao about the fascinating work she’s done on neural ODEs. We discuss applying control theoretic tools to optimise neural ODEs, as well as their use for both controller and observer design. And in case that wasn’t already enough we also touch on dissipativity, Koopman operators, and reinforcement learning!   You can find the transcript for this episode at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iI0swQSnNEqgGQgf7og8udRV3IBCXbbfEkLFlolGxEU/edit?usp=sharing Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   Join the live recording on 20th October 2026! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S9X66_Wfzc ( 9:30 PDT, 12:30 ET, 16:30 UTC, 17:30 BST, 18:30 CEST) References Keyan Miao: https://kymiao.github.io/ Richard Vinter: https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/r.vinter  QianXiao Li from NUS and Wei-Nan Er from Princeton: https://www.jmlr.org/papers/volume18/17-653/17-653.pdf https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40687-018-0172-y https://ems.press/journals/jems/articles/5404458   Book on control theory/ philosophy: https://apac.ee.kntu.ac.ir/publications/books/control-systems-a-historical-and-philosophical-perspective/ Control theory/ philosophy article: https://www.numberanalytics.com/blog/control-theory-philosophical-lens-language NCCR automation fellowship: https://nccr-automation.ch/research-fellowship Andreas Krause: https://las.inf.ethz.ch/krausea   Steve Brunton ResNet video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1UsKanMatM&t=911s Original neural ODE paper: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2018/file/69386f6bb1dfed68692a24c8686939b9-Paper.pdf Speeding up Neural ODE training and inference: https://proceedings.mlr.press/v235/miao24a.html   Neural ODE review: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950550X25000263 Review of Neural ODEs in biomedical engineering: https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-bioeng-110824-124907   Neural ODEs for observer design paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.00866 Non-linear observer review: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1367578821000948   Neural ODEs for control design papers: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.17139 Survey on CBFs: https://coogan.ece.gatech.edu/papers/pdf/amesecc19.pdf   Koopman operator paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.07294 Combining neural ODEs with RL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925231225007131   Neural ODE dissipativity paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005109826003043   Papers on Neural Network Verification: HuanZhang (UIUC) https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2018/file/d04863f100d59b3eb688a11f95b0ae60-Paper.pdf https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2021/file/fac7fead96dafceaf80c1daffeae82a4-Paper.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.26577   Papers on Direct NN parameterization: Ian Manchester (USyd)and Patricia Pauli (Eindhoven) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9319198 https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.22258 https://proceedings.mlr.press/v202/wang23v.html https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9867842   Ricky Chen: https://rtqichen.github.io/ Flow matching paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.02747 Antonis Papachristoudolou: https://eng.ox.ac.uk/people/antonis-papachristodoulou Carmen Amo Alonso episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/393QBgVgsQwgh4wKj1bcLy

In this episode I take you with me to the 2026 IFAC World Congress in Busan, South Korea, where I got to talk to a bunch of wonderful control researchers about their work. We cover a wide range of fascinating research areas, including observer design for transportation, event-triggered control, consensus control, extremum-seeking, robotic manipulation, control education and outreach, and a whole lot more!   You can find the transcript for this episode at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XE4krcWk6KgQjUUtgxKejmsTBYTermPeL9e3uVOnRJQ/edit?usp=sharing   Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/ References Workshops Arun Tangirala: https://arunkt-dev.github.io/ Prem Jagadeesan: https://www.amrita.edu/faculty/prem-jagadeesan/ Paper on defining sloppiness: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282609 Tom Oomen: https://toomen.eu/ Monday inControl podcast: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/ Selsabil Bougherara:  https://www.uphf.fr/lamih/membres/bougherara_selsabil Shengya Meng: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shengya-meng-1b299a294/ Laura Albert: https://engineering.wisc.edu/directory/profile/laura-albert/ Tuesday Ying Tan: https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/28203-ying-tan Miroslav Krstic inControl interview: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/16954129-ep31-miroslav-krstic-nonlinear-adaptive-control-pdes-delays-extremum-seeking-safety-neural-operators-for-control ESC paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4177053   Wednesday Frank Park: https://me.snu.ac.kr/en/snu__professor/park-frank-chongwoo/ Talk on geometric methods for robot learning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIKZzlomGIY Pritesh Patel: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/667tf7/doctor-pritesh-patel Paper on stability of adaptive control of switched systems: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751570X25000457   Interview with Brian Douglas: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0yUF9sf0cM2K9AeoQzoHal Nikwist: https://www.nikwist.be/ David Tinoco: https://dtinas10.github.io/homepage/ Quantum control podcast episodes: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5t577mI6iCh6ypd40nMxBQ https://open.spotify.com/episode/31XLcllhy4XK7gQ9NnDGfz Olaf Stursberg:  https://www.uni-kassel.de/eecs/en/sections/control-and-system-theory/team/prof-stursberg.html Sudhanshu Shekhar: https://www.iitk.ac.in/sudhanshu-shekhar Sonia Martinez: http://muro.ucsd.edu/sonia/ Overview of coverage control: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2407.13890 Paper on optimal transport: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8619816   ThursdayArkadeep Saha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arkadeep-saha-1b1a84252/ Steve Brunton SINDy videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSCa78TIldg Open source soft robotic platform: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5609765 https://github.com/ReshapeTUe/Soft-Legged-Wheel-Testbed Nicolás Faedo: https://www.polito.it/en/staff?p=nicolas.faedo Emilia Fushimi: http://www.gca.ing.unlp.edu.ar/?q=fushimi Tore Gude: https://www.ntnu.no/ansatte/tore.gude Friday Dan Hobson: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5xp9hs/mr-daniel-hobson/profileview/edit/ Cristina Stoica: https://l2s.centralesupelec.fr/en/u/stoica-cristina/ IFAC youTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ifacyoutube3132 OosCar non-linear control video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaOk003CiqA Art and control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awx-LOdbNH8 Rebecca Thien: https://l2s.centralesupelec.fr/en/u/thien-rebbecca-tze-yean/Kuberknots podcast: https://kuberknots.com/   IET travel support: https://www.theiet.org/impact-society/awards-prizes-and-scholarships/travel-awards

In this episode I had the pleasure of talking to the fantastic Francesca Boem about her work on monitoring networked systems, approaches to detecting faults and cyber attacks, as well as her new start-up helping to ensure the security of wireless health-tech devices!   You can find the transcript for this episode at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ttf7raapfDW4_aj3mnD8mSoy704d9T9BLnJk9QXbLqM/edit?usp=sharing   Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/ Drop me an email if you’re attending IFAC WC: [email protected]     References Francesca Boem: https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/65682-francesca-boem PhD thesis: https://www.openstarts.units.it/entities/publication/c9e28dd2-a9f3-4deb-bfb9-886a8f5d1661/details Thomas Parisini: https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/t.parisini Distributed fault detection paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6580380   Detectability of cyber attacks: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8264562 Cyber attack detection for microgrids: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9054955 Detecting covert cyber attacks: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9104026 Detecting replay attacks: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.00737 Fault-tolerant control/ active fault diagnosis: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8700304   CONTROL 2026 episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2MTAxQo4PlTC0zo7OcYRB4   BLE vulnerabilities paper: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10212293/1/ISCAS_2025_V4.pdf      GiancarloFerrari Tricate: https://people.epfl.ch/giancarlo.ferraritrecate KIOS centre: https://www.kios.ucy.ac.cy/

In this episode I have the pleasure of attending the CONTROL2026 conference, and bring you along with me! This conference was the largest gatheringof control engineers in the UK recent years, co-organized by the ACE network and UK Automatic Control Council (UKACC). Join me as I explore the ACE network and some of the fabulous control engineering research taking place across theUK! Join the ACE network!: ⁠https://ukcontrol.org/join-ace   You can find the transcript for this episode at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1131VDAX37W9GOJ87c0PZqXt83VMds1rAdapr1HdgN3Q/edit?usp=sharing   Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   References Control 2026: https://control2026.ukcontrol.org/ Conference proceedings: https://control2026.ukcontrol.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Control-2026-Proceedings-Booklet.pdf ACE network: https://ukcontrol.org/ UKACC: https://ukacc.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/ IFAC: https://www.ifac-control.org/ Pramod Khargonekar: https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/khargonekar/ Slides from his talk: https://coffeecontrollinks.short.gy/yaf5rk Norbert Weiner: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Norbert-Wiener Automony vs automation: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-020-01004-z InControl episode: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/11513053-ep6-norbert-wiener-and-cybernetics Macy Conference proceedings: http://cybernetic-bookshelf.org:8083/book/2636Dartmouth conference: https://opendigitalai.org/en/the-dartmouth-conference-1956-the-big-bang-of-ai/ John McCarthy: https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-McCarthy Daniel Coca: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/engineering/staff/profile/danielcoca.html EPSRC: https://www.ukri.org/councils/epsrc/ Interview with Andy Lawrence: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6BvPXw3YyoqdsvbQ573OF1 William Heath: https://www.bangor.ac.uk/staff/scse/william-heath-680178/en Alessandro Astolfi: https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/a.astolfi Antonis Papachristodoulou: https://eng.ox.ac.uk/people/antonis-papachristodoulou Stephen Duncan: https://www.st-hughs.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-stephen-duncan/ Francesca Boem: https://profiles.imperial.ac.uk/f.boem EDI survey: https://coffeecontrollinks.short.gy/ahijky Mentorship scheme sign-up form: https://ukcontrol.org/ace-network-mentor-scheme ACE position paper: https://ukcontrol.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ACE-Position-Paper.pdf Network + survey: https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=yRJQnBa2wkSpF2aBT74-hyrBNzE3vqFAgmzn8RVGrRVUM1pNMEZFREExUTBJQ1dRUkJTNFRGNEJPVi4u&route=shorturl   Claude shutdown: https://www.ithinkdiff.com/claude-fable-5-disabled-us-government/ Brian Douglas podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0yUF9sf0cM2K9AeoQzoHal   Chao Gu: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chao-gu-609073220/ Petri nets: http://www.petri-net.de/ AEGEAN: https://en.about.aegeanair.com/company/fleet/ Liam Hallinan: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LmZyKIIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao Salma Iraky: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salmassabry/ TERRA github: https://github.com/sssabry/tera Anton Selivanov: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anton-Selivanov Allan Nascimento (Multi-horizon MPC author): https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.soton.idm.oclc.org/author/867072138905292   Miroslav Krstic: https://flyingv.ucsd.edu/ Neural operators: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.08481 Mohammad Adballah: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/schools/meme/staff/phd/mohammad-abdallah/   Luke Rickard: https://www.lukerickard.co.uk/ Will Rohde: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wfmrohde/ Dan Hobson: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5xp9hs/mr-daniel-hobson Anthony Rossiter: https://ieeecss.org/contact/anthony-rossiter Control101 toolbox: https://uk.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/130439-control-101-toolbox

In the second part of my interview with the incredibly talented Carmen Amo Alonso we discuss her fascinating work at the intersection of AI and control, examining topics such as: Using tools from control theory to analyse and design AI systems Controlling large language models to guarantee a particular sentiment for their output Using vision-language-action models to control robots using language and a whole lot more!   You can find the transcript for this episode at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ph1yaQuV_ybRM8h9rU5Uvmz9eB5Ar4HVhcBnc7b7zJ8/edit?usp=sharing Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   References The architecture of language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApC0AWWTajU Diffusion models: https://the-principles-of-diffusion-models.github.io/ Skip connection paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.10609 Review of state-space models in AI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16899 3 Blue 1 Brown video on transformers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjZofJX0v4M Dynamical systems framework paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15731 Designing sequence models: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09389v1 Controlling LLM output: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15454v3 Controllability of LLMs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.05637v1   Vision-language-action model paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.05487v1 NARRATE: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.10762 DEMONSTRATE: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12855v1 Domitilla Del Vecchio: https://meche.mit.edu/people/faculty/[email protected] Biomolecular feedback systems book: https://www.fbswiki.org/wiki/index.php/Biomolecular_Feedback_Systems Mathias Foo episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1G3vhRoeenTWRrEwauT0ne inControl episodes: Mario di Bernardo: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/19167890-ep44-mario-di-bernardo-from-circuits-to-cells-and-swarms-control-meets-complexity Mustafa Khammash: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/12648716-ep11-mustafa-khammash-cybergenetics John Doyle: https://ieeecss.org/contact/john-doyle InControl episode: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/12841020-ep12-john-doyle-part-i-a-pioneer-s-guide-to-robust-control-the-past-present-and-future Jerome Sieber: https://jerome.sieber.io/

In this episode I talk to the very wonderful Carmen Amo Alonso about her (award-winning) PhD research on distributed and localised MPC. We also cover super interesting and useful concepts such as system-level synthesis and ADMM, as well as her internship working at Tesla! You can access the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SErvHtKoE18QzelHDUh9im6AeG3zKPWZLRoNGx5BUyg/edit?usp=sharing Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   References Carmen: https://camoalon.github.io/ JPL: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ John Doyle: https://ieeecss.org/contact/john-doyle Feedback in biological control: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9867859 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9867794 Thesis: https://thesis.caltech.edu/15262/3/Carmen_Amo_Alonso_Caltech_PhD_Thesis.pdf Distributed localised MPC paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9939038   Professor Melanie Zeilinger: https://nccr-automation.ch/about/people/melanie-zeilinger-0 SLS for robust nonlinear optimal control: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.04943 Professor Nikolai Matni: https://nikolaimatni.github.io/ System-level synthesis tutorial: https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.01634   YouTube videos on DLMPC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2Wbriy2Zg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhtuGZp8QM0&t=302s ADMM survey paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.03700 Professor James Anderson: https://www.columbia.edu/~ja3451/   Data-driven DLMCP: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9772975 Willems fundamental lemma: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/262195/1/PersistencyExcitation.pdf Paolo Rapisarda episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/076dEw28abILPAbT5qA6aw   Implementing DLMP on GPUs: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9831839 Clubes de Ciencia: Mexico: https://clubesdeciencia.mx/ Peru: https://clubesdecienciaperu.org/ Terry Sejnowski: https://biology.ucsd.edu/research/faculty/tsejnowski

In this episode I talk to three lovely researchers all about journal clubs (AKA reading groups) – what they are, why you might want to be part of one, and how to start your own! I also give some insights from my own experiences running a (control-related) journal club, as well as a summary of three of my favourite papers we’ve read.   You can find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19i4egf_2KEWqkp94ZW3QjRTH8PeAZz6yEix8zoSfx4k/edit?usp=sharing Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   References Al Edwards: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/62mm7y/doctor-al-edwards Antonia Marcu: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5xk5lz/miss-antonia-marcu Convexification for soft landing optimal control paper: http://www.larsblackmore.com/iee_tcst13.pdf Improved soft robotic parameterisation paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8961972 KKL observer synthesis paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.11655

In this episode I got the opportunity to sit down with the fantastic Brian Douglas and talk about what it's like to be a control engineer in industry, common misconceptions he had, and advice for current students. We also discussed his YouTube channel, as well as a few more technical aspects of projects he's been involved with over the years! You can find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gAyIAgd3RzVSSDmJ-As0gzJVekJG3IqU2L-1zJhuKYs/edit?usp=sharing Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   References Brian Douglas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-douglas-505b7175/ Engineering Media (Brian’s company): https://engineeringmedia.com/ Original YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq0imsn84ShAe9PBOFnoIrg MATLAB YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MATLAB Co-design podcast episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3upRUgZBy79tqihMy9BDsJ Veritasium: https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium Smarter every day: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6107grRI4m0o2-emgoDnAA Mark Rober: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRober Formal verification video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kINfn-ZYiLY InControl episode: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/15223020-ep24-brian-douglas-boeing-control-videos-resourcium-map-of-control-theory-cartoons-mathworks

In this episode I got to speak with the fantastic Gioele Zardini about his work on the co-design framework, a fascinating framework used to optimise large interconnected systems. We cover the theoretical background of this, intuition behind it, and a ton of different applications where it’s useful, as well as discussing exciting open questions in the field!   Find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XPZr9jP4Lphskkw-SiM8h-x1kp7LROqZ243S6zA7EsY/edit?usp=sharing Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   References Gioele Zardini: https://zardini.mit.edu/ PhD thesis: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/entities/publication/d7c08dd5-bf96-4c1f-a744-5e751f0f44a5 PhDs in control interview: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10555200 Emilio Frazzoli: https://idsc.ethz.ch/research-frazzoli/people/person-detail.frazzoli.html Andrea Cenci: https://nccr-automation.ch/about/people/andrea-censi Marco Pavone: https://profiles.stanford.edu/marco-pavone NuTonomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuTonomy(current site: https://motional.com/) Brad Nelson: https://msrl.ethz.ch/the-lab/team/Brad_Nelson.html David Sacramuza: https://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/people_scaramuzza.html Yujun Huang: https://zardini.mit.edu/people/yujun-huang/ Uncertainty in co-design paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.02766   Background refs on category theory: David Spivak: https://dspivak.net/Brendan Fong: http://brendanfong.com/ Gioele's work in progress book: https://storage.zuper.ai/sync/ACT4E/ACT4E/alphubel-prod/build/last/build-public/ACT4E-public.pdf YouTube talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmAz6fEPa2o Gioele's course: https://zardini.mit.edu/act4ed/ MIT applied category theory course: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-s097-applied-category-theory-january-iap-2019/ Seven sketches in compositionality: http://brendanfong.com/fong_spivak_an_invitation.pdf   LQG control co-design paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9654960 LQG background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4_hFazBGxUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_RDCFOlJx4 Aaron Ames: http://ames.caltech.edu/ Nikolai Matni: https://nikolaimatni.github.io/ John Doyle: https://www.eas.caltech.edu/people/doyleCDC episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ZUcm3gVHKILDEyDjQtXvx   Braess’s paradox: https://resources.mpi-inf.mpg.de/departments/d1/teaching/ws12/ct/Braess-paradox.pdf   Co-design of mobility-on-demand systems: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.04739   Formula One co-design papers: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/entities/publication/bd65f78e-f19a-4469-a379-d4b219893a33https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/JQmudB Co-design of soft robotics: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.03761   Cosimo Della Santina inControl episode: https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/LPNORz   Games with partially-ordered objectives: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.07099 Mingjia He: https://mingjia-he.github.io/ Paper on hierarchical games: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12059 Game theory episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2xrwua7U2HfSW3sxY6BnRU Jeff Shamma inControl episode: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/18482182-ep40-jeff-shamma-gain-scheduling-nonlinear-control-learning-dissipativity-in-games-jiu-jitsu Vincent Abbott: https://zardini.mit.edu/people/vincent-abbott/ Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli: https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/sangiovanni-vicentelli.html InControl episodes:  https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/14692449-ep21-alberto-sangiovanni-vincentelli-part-i-classics-eda-logic-synthesis-spice-intel-x386-cadence-synopsis-platform-based-design https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/14882529-ep22-alberto-sangiovanni-vincentelli-part-ii-cyberphysical-and-hybrid-systems-contracts-chiplets-models-of-computation-time-innovative-ecosystems-biobricks-neuromorphics John Doyle: https://www.eas.caltech.edu/people/doyle

In this episode I have a lovely conversation with Dr Barbara Franci about her research into game theory, exploring both theoretical concepts (such as variational inequalities, forwards-backwards algorithms, and stochastic Nash equilibrium-seeking problems) and practical applications, including resource allocation, energy management, and generative adversarial networks!   You can find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h9AbCPzzlt7ggNOGx3bK3pwSaCUo__LtYzvdJ-5wqYw/edit?usp=sharing   Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   References Barbara Franci: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/b-franci PhD thesis: https://tesidottorato.depositolegale.it/bitstream/20.500.14242/198173/1/FRANCI%20Tesi2.pdf More background on evolutionary games: https://users.ssc.wisc.edu/~whs/teaching/805/handbook.pdf Jeff Shamma inConctrol episode: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/18482182-ep40-jeff-shamma-gain-scheduling-nonlinear-control-learning-dissipativity-in-games-jiu-jitsu  Wisdom of a crowd paper: https://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/18M1232267 Francesco Bullo: https://fbullo.github.io/ Original Galton paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/075450a0   Video on the Lagrangian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR4ff0dTLTw Useful lecture notes on these concepts: https://www.mit.edu/~gfarina/notes/   Distributed forwards-backwards paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9309063 Extragradient paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/11184508 Relaxed inertial forwards-backwards paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9682905   Professor Lacra Pavel: https://www.ece.utoronto.ca/people/pavel-l/ Deterministic decoupling paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330888828_An_operator_splitting_approach_for_distributed_generalized_Nash_equilibria_computation Pseudo-monotone functions: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225986571_Pseudomonotone_Operators_A_Survey_of_the_Theory_and_Its_Applications Inertial gradient descent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iudXf5n_3ro&t=60s   GANs paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9523601 Original Goodfellow paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2661 Partial information paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005109821006300 Incorporating a bias: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10886508 Nash games with misleading information: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/11008595 Evolutionary dynamics in distributed control: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7823106

In this bonus episode I explore the work of ten fascinating researchers that I met at the Meet the Faculty Candidates poster session at CDC last month. We cover a wide array of different areas, including data-driven methods, fault-tolerant control, biological systems, PDEs, distributed estimation and a whole lot more!   Correction: At ~5:20 I mention that Anju was able to characterize the strategies of the two communicating entities at the Nash equilibrium - In actual fact this is a Stackelberg equilibrium (Stackelberg games involve players acting sequentially, taking either a leader or follower role) You can view the transcript for this episode at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Tf4ORHPI5Thbs-nA9DQTSu87TKbYni9JJN2UXqn5kU/edit?usp=sharing Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   Links and references Amy Strong: https://bridgeman.pratt.duke.edu/people/amy-strong Paper on data-driven invariance: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19231   Anju Anand: https://sites.google.com/binghamton.edu/anjuanand Strategic quantisation: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10960399 Incorporating privacy into the objective: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.06321   Brian Block: https://mae.osu.edu/people/block.168 Control of PDE traffic flow: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.04823 Declan Jagt: https://search.asu.edu/profile/3729730 Stability analysis of coupled multivariate PDEs: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.14840 Scalar quadratic PDEs: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10384073 PIETOOLS software: https://control.asu.edu/pietools/pietools Hamza El-Kebir: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamza-el-kebir/ Control authority degradation paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10354437 Sensor and actuator degradation: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10521243 Electrosurgery paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article/21/210/20230420/90578/Heat-conduction-in-live-tissue-during Electrostatic signed distance functions: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12554   Kirill Sechkar: https://engbio.ox.ac.uk/people/kirill-sechkar Control of genetic circuits paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.01.646303v2.full.pdf   Nick Marios Kokolakis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-marios-t-kokolakis-44717b164/ Pre-defined time RL paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005109825003152  Parth Paritosh: https://pptx.github.io/pparitosh/Estimating a subset of variables: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.01227 Privacy preserving paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/11073227 Radoslaw Patelski: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radoslaw-patelski/?originalSubdomain=pl Observers for hovercraft: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9874346 ADRC with parameter identification: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10345678 ADRC with adaptive input gain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019057825001089   Carmen Amo Alonso: https://camoalon.github.io/ Research overview: https://camoalon.github.io/research/ Comparing mixer blocks: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.15731 Intro to state space models in deep learning: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.16899 Combining generative AI with control in robotics: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.10762

In this episode I bring my microphones with me to the conference of decision and control (CDC) where I talk to a load of interesting researchers about their recent work. Featuring discussion of a wide range of different topics, including reinforcement learning, control architecture, game theory, AI-human interaction, event-triggered control and a whole lot more!   You can view the episode transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h6PdTd9xLTcJOGPx6TIkXOKPz_NGoS9_sA8CUvoZlx8/edit?usp=sharing   Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   CDC web-page: https://cdc2025.ieeecss.org/ Female influencers in control: https://www.control.lth.se/external-engagement/female-influencers-in-automatic-control/ Survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe7VtNHI6bG8UBEoSGiAuVXNsmXSHlw8xG0LuMon2DVd0Pv0A/viewform inControl episode: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/18361436-ep39-female-influencers-in-control   Alessandro Abate: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/alessandro.abate/ Maegan Tucker: https://maegantucker.com/ Joe Moeller: https://joe-moeller.com/ Category theory blog: https://joe-moeller.com/hi/ Rodolphe Sepulchre: https://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/profiles/rs771 inControl episode: https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/9HLW37 Spiking control of a snake: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.02968 Neuromorphic architecture: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.11924   Raj Velichete: https://ece.illinois.edu/about/directory/grad-students/rkv4 Vijeth Hebber: https://www.vijethhebbar.com/ John Doyle: https://www.eas.caltech.edu/people/doyle InControl episodes: https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/yx0IF5https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/qtk0Le Dimos Dimarogonas: https://people.kth.se/~dimos/ Plenary on formal verification for multi-agent systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C3GSgVmxdo&t=1327s Attacks on controlling multi-agent systems: https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.soton.idm.oclc.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11036540 ESC inspired by insect flapping: https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.soton.idm.oclc.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11006034 My CDC paper: https://pure.soton.ac.uk/admin/files/315205732/CDC2025_2_.pdf Jorge Poveda: https://poveda.ucsd.edu/ Victoria Grushkovskaya: https://grushkovska.science/ Higher-order Lie bracket extremum-seeking: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.07092 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.01136   Azu Ozdaglar: https://asu.mit.edu/ Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DR37zdEKPw Matt Turner: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5y5nkg/professor-matthew-turner Matt Turner episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5KLLOvbCjOkL0v8iXo84vt Kemin Zhou: https://www.ece.lsu.edu/kemin/ Multiobjective complementary control: https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.soton.idm.oclc.org/document/10767397   Yujun Huang: https://zardini.mit.edu/people/yujun-huang/ Tyler Hanks: https://gataslab.org/members/tylerhanksNextCom: https://sites.google.com/view/css-nextcom NextCom podcast episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7exZHRwVazI8AaHtiSMmE8 Csaba Szepesvari: https://sites.ualberta.ca/~szepesva/ Friday plenary talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W2IrHyuSjU Fengyu Yue: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fengyu-yue-8849a6314/?originalSubdomain=il Pio Ong: https://pioong.github.io/ Jacqueline Scherpen: https://www.rug.nl/staff/j.m.a.scherpen/?lang=en Bode lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W2IrHyuSjU  (Skip to 4:52:46) Alberto Padoan episode on model order reduction: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1kwlnlQqtID1naRcyLL12O Meggie Maschner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meggie-marschner-445634236/?originalSubdomain=de Brooks Butler: https://sites.google.com/view/brooks-butler Mauro Salazar: https://www.tue.nl/en/research/researchers/mauro-salazar Design of smart cities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W2IrHyuSjU  (Skip to 8:32:49)

In this episode I talk to some wonderful members of IEEEcontrol systems society (CSS) NextCom committee about their work fostering inclusivity and belonging within CSS, as well as empowering the next generation of leaders within control. We also cover how you can be a part of this!   You can find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/186arBxVLdcpHUCT9djgXQ7IMVvX5SLsMk0LmnzOLbRY/edit?usp=sharing   Fill in this leadership interest survey if you’d like to getinvolved:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc-9qK13qYOSylyo-L-s8LvIYjd9bUmWlpd7zj2C7cxDASK-Q/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=113511961640315346198   Slack channel: https://join.slack.com/t/next-comworkspace/shared_invite/zt-3kz84ooc6-iLeTIhTKs5oMwJ8ccjTZxw(This link will time-out after a little while – if you find it’s not working you can contract me or one of the other committee members and we can add you directly!)   Links and references NextCom webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/css-nextcom Brooks Butler: https://sites.google.com/view/brooks-butler Email: [email protected] Anastasia Bizyaeva: https://anastasiabzv.github.io/ Email: [email protected] Phil E Paré: https://sites.google.com/view/philpare Umar Niazi: https://sites.google.com/view/umarniazi/ Urmee Maitra: https://urmeemaitra.github.io/ Carina Veil: https://profiles.stanford.edu/carina-veil Pio Ong: https://pioong.github.io/ Leonardo Toso: https://leotoso.github.io/     ECC episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4PAlFzgSoLM6andaXEWB8e

This month I got to interview Sophie Schirmer about herfascinating work on quantum control, including notions such as controllability and realisability, different types of quantum states (including pure, mixed, and dark states), comparison between different approaches to optimisation, and the quantum phenomena inside MRI scanners!   You can find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l0TFtckp7zEKCG0wdMHY0nySptrzbkV9ohQExa6ykGg/edit?usp=sharing Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/   References Sophie’s thesis: https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/items/63c4205b-9a0d-4622-833f-377f975c8cb3 Herschel Rabitz papers: https://pubs.aip.org/aip/acp/article-abstract/334/1/160/783416/Control-of-quantum-dynamics-The-dream-is-alive?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.259.5101.1581 Control paradigms for quantum engineering: https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2890 Energy landscape shaping as feedback control: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8119551   Kinematic bounds paper: https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.58.2684 Dynamic realisability of systems that aren’t completelycontrollable: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/912046 Types of controllability: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0305-4470/35/18/309 More detail in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0110171 Hilbert spaces: https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~hunter/book/ch6.pdf Pure vs mixed states: https://medium.com/@emilmarinov/pure-mixed-and-entangled-quantum-states-84e8a4a8dd16 Controllability with a single actuator: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0801.0721 Dark states and their enlightenment: https://arxiv.org/abs/1003.4290   Quantum gravity lecture: https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/oxford-mathematics-public-lectures-carlo-rovelli-spin-networks-quantum-structure-spacetime-penroses Incorporating encoding into quantum system design: https://journals.aps.org/pra/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevA.109.042408 Ilja Kuprov: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5x97wv/professor-ilya-kuprov Beyondpiecewise constant controls: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.09458  Lyaounov functions: https://underactuated.mit.edu/lyapunov.html p.s. I would highly recommend the inControl episode on AleksandrLyapunov: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/18019902-ep37-a-m-lyapunov-the-general-problem-of-stability-of-motion Control Lyapunov functions: https://stanford.edu/class/ee363/lectures/io-lyap.pdf Lyapunov control of quantum systems: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=5415539 Entanglement generation: https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.80.042305 Bell states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_state Edmund Jonckheere: https://ee.usc.edu/~jonckhee/ SSV paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9682796 Robust control of open quantum systems: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9792196 Entanglement generation in a lossy cavity: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9992337 Quantum reservoir engineering: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1474667016316962 Energy landscape shaping paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/addc0d/pdf Schrodinger’s cat review paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjd/e2015-60464-1 Feynman’s lectures on physics: https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/

In this month’s episode got to talk to Dr Carrie Weidner allabout controlling quantum systems! I find out what the control objective is forthese systems, how to characterise their robustness (or at least attempt to),how easy it is to apply this to practical systems, and a lot more besides. You can find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aixaD-P6R6jFDjS4Zp6nJ2n5ZHPfbWKYCue2v2_ZCVU/edit?usp=sharing   Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/ Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/ References PhD thesis: https://jila.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/2019-03/Weidner_PhD_final.pdf Sabine Hauert episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/65iwMh2NstKqXvfATpzfm4 Sabine episode transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12t_8k9LRckeGB--YVDS0XWnOeLX8sQcY3njA7jBCj1o/edit?usp=sharing Carrie’s quantum control survey: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2401.00294 Sophie Shermer: https://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/s.schirmer/ Frank Langbein: https://langbein.org/ Edmond Jonckheere: https://ee.usc.edu/~jonckhee/ Sean O’Neil: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=250lKHEAAAAJ&hl=en Phila Rembold: https://qusco-itn.eu/portfolio_page/phila-rembold-2/ Bases in quantum control: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.20889 Nelder-Mead optmisation: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Nelder-Mead_algorithm#Advantages_and_disadvantageshttps://brandewinder.com/2022/03/31/breaking-down-Nelder-Mead/ Ronnie Kosloff: https://www.humboldt-foundation.de/en/connect/explore-the-humboldt-network/singleview/1211067/prof-dr-ronnie-kosloff Belavkin-Carmichael quantum filter: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0510028 Luenburg filter papers: https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.06454 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6426181 Non-Markovian systems papers: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/14/7/073023  https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.09637 Christiane Koch: https://atominnen.at/empower/interviews/382-christiane-koch Open quantum systems paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0953-8984/28/21/213001 Carrie’s mu analysis paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.12385 Randa Herzallah: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/maths/people/staff/herzallah/ Paper on quantum optimal control: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00207179.2024.2342939 Quantum thermodynamics paper: https://journals.aps.org/pra/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevA.98.012139 Irtaza Khalid: https://profiles.cardiff.ac.uk/staff/khalidmi Robustness-infidelity metric paper: https://journals.aps.org/pra/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevA.107.032606 Time-domain log-sensitivity paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.15783 Unifying log-sensitivity and RIM: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.09518   Robust quantum control papers: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2110.05372 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.13691   Energy landscape shaping paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/addc0d Jacob Sherson: https://jacobsherson.com/ David DiVincenzo: https://qutech.nl/person/david-divincenzo/   Enrico Fermi: https://www.dpma.de/english/our_office/publications/milestones/greatinventors/enricofermi/index.html Physical review letters paper: https://link.aps.org/accepted/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.263201 Point spread modification paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.05341