Meet Our Professors and Researchers
The programme is taught by renowned experts in modelling, control systems, and applied mathematics, including:
- S. Ahmed (The Netherlands) – Expert in system control theory
- H. Gernandt (Germany) – Expert in system theory.
- Y. Le Gorrec (France) – Coordinator, expert in port-Hamiltonian system theory and control theory.
- A. Macchelli (Italy) – Specialist in control theory and robotics.
- B. Maschke (France) – Pioneer in port-Hamiltonian systems theory.
- T. Reis (Germany) – Expert in distributed parameter systems.
- S. Trenn (The Netherlands) – Expert in applied mathematics and numerical analysis.
This interdisciplinary team ensures a high-quality curriculum, combining theory and hands-on training.
Bernhard Maschke
University Claude Bernard Lyon 1
Bernhard Maschke has graduated as engineer in telecommunications from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Télécommunications, Paris, France, in 1984. He received his Ph.D. degree in Automatic Control in 1990 for his work on the control of robotic manipulators with flexible arms performed at the Advanced Robotics Engineering Unit of the Atomic Energy Commision (CEA) in Fontenay–aux–Roses, (France). He then received the Habilitation to Direct Research from the University of Paris-Sud, Orsay, France in 1998 for his work on Port Hamiltonian systems.
He has been Associate Professor at the Laboratory of Industrial Automation of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, Paris, France from 1990 until 2000. Since September 2000, he is Professor of Automatic Control at the Laboratory of Control and Chemical Engineering (LAGEP UMR CNRS 5007) of the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Villeurbanne, France.
His research interests concern the system’s theory and control of open and complex multi-physical systems. He contributed to the formulation of physical systems’ theory in terms of port-Hamiltonian systems and the development of passive controllers based on the assignment of the geometric structure in closed loop. His current research activity mainly concerns the geometric structure of Irreversible Thermodynamic systems, Boundary Port Hamiltonian systems defined on Lagrange submanifolds in finite and infinite-dimension and the optimal control based on the minimisation of the exergy and entropy creation.
Birgit Jacob
University of Wuppertal
rof. Birgit Jacob received the M.Sc. degree in mathematics from the University of Dortmund, Germany, in 1992 and the Ph.D. degree in mathematics from the University of Bremen, Germany, in 1995.
She held postdoctoral and Professor positions at the University of Twente, University of Leeds, University of Paderborn, Berlin University of Technology, and at the Delft University of Technology.
Since 2010, she has been with the University of Wuppertal, Germany, where she is a Full Professor in analysis. From 2012-2016, she has been the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.
She is a member of the editorial board of Operators and Matrices and Series Editor of the Birkhäuser Verlag book series Linear Operators and Linear Systems. Her current research interests include the area of infinite-dimensional systems and operator theory, particularly well-posed linear systems and port-Hamiltonian systems.
Ghislain Haine
Alessandro Macchelli
University of Bologna
Statut: Full Professor
Dept : Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering "Guglielmo Marconi"
Alessandro Macchelli took the Laurea Degree cum laude and the PhD in Automatic Control and Operational Research at the University of Bologna (DEIS) in 2000 and 2003. He has been visiting scholar at the University of Twente in 2001 and Post-Doc in 2003. In 2004, he got a Post-Doc position at the University of Bologna (DEIS), and in 2005, he joined DEIS as assistant professor in robotics and industrial automation. After 2005, he has been visiting professor at the Tongji University in Shanghai, at the Institute of Automatic Control and Control Systems Technology of the Johannes Kepler University Linz, at the National Engineering Institute in Mechanics and Micro–Technologies (FEMTO-ST/AS2M) in Besaçon, and at the Institute of Cyber-Systems & Control of the Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. His research activity is focused on port-Hamiltonian systems and applications of the port-Hamiltonian framework to robotics and mechatronics: he is author of more than 80 journal and conference papers on these topics. Currently, he serves as Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control and for the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.
Saeed Ahmed
University of Groningen
Website: https://www.rug.nl/staff/s.ahmed/
Saeed Ahmed is an Assistant Professor of Systems and Control at Univeristy of Groningen (RUG), affiliated with the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen (ENTEG) and the Jan C. Willems Center for Systems and Control. He joined RUG in December 2022, following research positions at RUG and the Technical University of Kaiserslautern (now RPTU), Germany, Inria Paris-Saclay, France, and Bilkent University, Turkey. He completed his Ph.D. at Bilkent University, Turkey and CentraleSupélec, France. His research interests include intelligent control for autonomous vehicles, energy systems, and mechatronics. On the theoretical side, his work focuses on control and optimisation for smart autonomy with emphasis on feedback optimisation, observer design, nonlinear and hybrid systems, game theory, and reinforcement learning. He has received awards such as Best Presentation (IEEE Graduate Research Conference 2018) and the Outstanding Reviewer award (European Journal of Control). He serves as an Associate Editor of Systems and Control Letters and IEEE Technology Conference Editorial Board and is a member of IFAC Technical Committees on Networked Systems, Non-linear Control Systems, and Distributed Parameter Systems. He earned his University Teaching Qualification (UTQ) degree from RUG.
Pablo Borja
Pablo Borja received his bachelor's degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and his master's degree in Electrical Engineering, specializing in control systems, from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico, in 2011 and 2013, respectively. Then, he obtained his PhD in "Automatique" from Paris-Saclay University, France, in 2017. From October to December 2015, He was a visiting PhD student at the Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. From January to February 2016, He was a visiting PhD student at the Johann Bernoulli Institute at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. From 2017 to 2018, He was a postdoctoral researcher member of the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen (ENTEG) at the University of Groningen. From 2018 to 2021, He was a fellow of the Faculty of Science and Engineering and an ENTEG member at the University of Groningen. From 2021 to 2022, He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Cognitive Robotics at the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Since October 2022, He has been a lecturer in Control Systems Engineering at the University of Plymouth, UK.
Laurent Lefèvre
Statut: Full Professor
Dept : Grenoble Alpes University
Laurent Lefèvre got his B.Sc. from Ecole Polytechnique de Bruxelles (1991) and his M.Sc. in applied mathematics from Ecole Polytechnique de Louvain (1994), both in
Belgium.Then he moved to Lille (North of France) and got his Ph.D. in control from Ecole Centrale de Lille (1999). Since 2011 he got a full professor position at Grenoble Institute of Technology, Univ. Grenoble Alpes. His current domains of interest are numerical methods for simulation and control, distributed parameters systems, modelling and analysis of complex dynamical systems. He is involved in various project related to applications in complex water systems, process engineering, microgrids and plasma physics (tokamaks).
Bayu Jayawardhana
Hans Zwart
Hans Zwart is professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics at University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands, where he is the chairperson of the Mathematics of System Theory (MaST) group. His research interest is on distributed parameter systems, i.e., systems modelled by partial differential equations. He has written many articles and 3 books on this topic. The subclass of port-Hamiltonian systems has been a focus area of his research during the last years.
Yongxin WU
Université Marie et Louis Pasteur Besançon
Statut: Associate professor
Director of Master ARMAC, UMLP
Role: Local coordinator at Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, Besançon
Tasks: Faculty member with teaching and research activities
Dept : AS2M, FEMTO-ST
I'm currently an Associate Professor (Maître de conférences) in automatic control at the French school of Engineering: École Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique et des Microtechniques (ENSMM) in Besançon and a researcher in the Department of Automatique et Systèmes Micro-Mécatroniques (AS2M) at FEMTO-ST. My research interests are in the fields of port Hamiltonian systems, distributed parameter systems, and model and controller order reductions. I am also interested on the application of modeling and control theory on the Electro-active polymer-based soft actuators.
Stephan Trenn
University of Groningen
Website: https://stephantrenn.net/
Stephan Trenn is currently an Associate Professor for “Systems and Control” in the Jan C. Willems Center for Systems and Control (in particular in the SCO-group) at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.
His main research interests is the analysis and control of switched differential-algebraic equations (DAEs). In general he is interested in questions of mathematical control theory with a focus on discontinuous effects (switches) as well as on nonlinear adaptive control (in particular, funnel control).
Boussad Hamroun
University Claude Bernard Lyon 1
Boussad Hamroun is an Associate Professor at LAGEPP and at the Department of Electrical and Process Engineering University Lyon 1, involved in publications on subjects such as robust control of bilinear systems and heat exchanger modeling. He co-supervises the EEEA bachelor's degree and teaches courses in automation and linear dynamic systems.
Stefano Stramigioli
Stefano Stramigioli is a scientist and engineer born in Italy and now living since 1992 in the Netherlands and holding both the Italian and Dutch nationality. He is affiliated with the University of Twente where he leads the Robotics And Mechatronics (RAM) Lab.
He has served as Vice President Research of euRobotics and ADRA. He was also the funder and chair of the first robotics center in the Netherland started in 2008, first called Romech and then LEO Center of Service Robotics.
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) since 2015[1] for contributions to modeling, control and realization of complex robotics systems and also a member of the Royal Holland Society of Science and Humanities (KHMW). He is recipient of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Distinguished Service Award[2] and he is an ERC Advance Grant Laureate on the project PortWing
Hannes Gernandt
University of Wuppertal
Statut: Jun.-Prof. Dr.
Hannes Gernandt is a Junior Professor at the University of Wuppertal, where he has held the Chair in Port-Hamilton Systems since December 2023. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Fraunhofer Institute IEG, in the Energy Management and Control research group, from November 2022 to December 2023.
Sike Glas
Website: https://silkeglas.de/
Sile Glas is an assistant professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at University of Twente, where she is currently working on model reduction on manifolds in the MaST group lead by Hans Zwart. Before coming to Enschede, She was a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University working with David Bindel on stellarator optimization in the Simons Collaboration on Hidden Symmetries and Fusion Energy. She did her PhD at the Institute of Numerical Mathematics at Ulm University with Karsten Urban.
Ning Liu
Université Marie et Louis Pasteur Besançon
Ning Liu received the bachelor degree in aircraft design and engineering from the Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China in 2016, and the engineer degree (equivalent of master degree) in mechanical engineering from the national institute of applied sciences (INSA), Lyon, France in 2017, and the Ph.D. degree in automatic control from the FEMTO-ST institute (UMR CNRS 6174), University Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Besançon, France, in 2020.
Since 2021, she was a Postdoc researcher in the Integrated Actuators Laboratory, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Neuchâtel, Switzerland. From Oct. 2021, she becomes the Associate Professor (Maîtres de Conférences in French) at Université de Franche-Comté, and conducts her research work at FEMTO-ST Institute.
Her research interests include electro-active polymer actuators, port-Hamiltonian systems, structure preserving discretization and passivity-based control.
Paul Kotyczka
Statut: Adjunct Professor
Dept : TUM School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich
Website: https://www.epc.ed.tum.de/rt/pk/
Paul Kotyczka received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering and the Dr.-Ing. degree in Automatic Control from Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2005 and 2010, respectively. From 2015 to 2017 he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Laboratory of Automatic Control, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Engineering (LAGEPP), University Claude Bernard Lyon 1. He habilitated in 2019, and since 2025 he is an Adjunct Professor in Automatic Control and leads a group on Energy-based Modeling and Control. His research interests include structured modeling, geometric numerical methods and nonlinear control design for multi-domain physical systems, with applications to mechatronic, robotic and process systems. He is program coordinator of the French-German Doctoral College Port-Hamiltonian Systems: Modeling, Numerics and Control and organizer of the tri-annual Spring Schools on Theory and Applications of Port-Hamiltonian Systems. He serves as Associate Editor for Control Engineering Practice.
Yann Le Gorrec
Université Marie et Louis Pasteur Besançon
Statut: Full Professor
Role: Project coordinator, Faculty member with teaching and research activities
Task: teaching, Master project supervision and pedagogical managementProject coordinator
Dept : AS2M Department, FEMTO-ST
Website: http://legorrec.free.fr/wordpress/
Publications: http://events.femto-st.fr/MCDPS-PHS
Y. Le Gorrec was graduated as engineer in « Control, Electronics, Computer Engineering » at the National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA, Toulouse, France) in 1995. He received in 1998 his Ph. D. degree from the National Higher School of Aeronautics and Aerospace (Supaero, Toulouse, France). His field of interest was robust control and self scheduled controller synthesis. From 1999 to 2008, he was Associate Professor in Automatic Control at the Laboratory of Control and Chemical Engineering of Lyon Claude Bernard University (LAGEP, Villeurbanne, France). He worked on port Hamiltonian systems and their use for the modeling and control of irreversible and distributed parameter systems with an application to physico-chemical processes. From september 2008 he is Professor at National Engineering Institute in Mechanics and Microtechnologies. His current field of research is the control of non linear systems and infinite dimensional systems with an application to smart material based actuators, and micro actuators by using the port Hamiltonian framework.
Denis Matignon
Statut: Full Professor
Denis Matignon currently works at the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Automatics, Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (ISAE-SUPAERO). Denis does research in Applied Mathematics. His most recent publications are 'Port-Hamiltonian formulation and symplectic discretization of plate models Part II : Kirchhoff model for thin plates', or ''A structure-preserving Partitioned Finite Element Method for the 2D wave equation' on port-Hamiltonian systems; and 'Energy analysis and discretization of nonlinear impedance boundary conditions for the time-domain linearized Euler equations' or 'Diffusive Approximation of a Time-Fractional Burger's Equation in Nonlinear Acoustics' on fractional PDEs.
Jacquelien Scherpen
