Welcome to the Control Training Site

   Last updated: 27 January, 2004   

 

The Multi-partner Marie Curie Training Site, entitled Control Training Site is funded by the European Commission with a global support over four years (Starting January, 2002) of 960 fellow-months. The lead organization is the CNRS at Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

In this framework, three to twelve months of full fellowship support are available. This site organizes international doctoral studies in the scientific area of control theory, optimization and applications. The CTS addresses any European student starting the doctoral studies or pursuing doctoral studies in the large domain of Control and Optimization, including various domains of control theory, optimization and control engineering. Qualified applicants can either complete their first-year doctoral studies, by choosing some courses proposed by the CTS, or can obtain a complete first-year certificate, or can access to the training site in order to enhance their already started doctoral studies. In this later case, they can choose one of the CTS-research project or contact directly any CTS-Member .

Current list of CTS Fellows

The CTS selected students will be encouraged to attend several courses, schools and major conferences in the domain of optimization and control. The main objective of the Control Training Site is to allow a student to be sufficiently trained to continue with fundamental mathematical research or to do a research that is more oriented towards applications.

Who can apply
How to apply
Stay at the Host Institute
Course description 2003-2004 Formation en Automatique à Paris (FAP)
Research projects
Schools-Workshops- Conferences CIME course, 21-29 June 2004
First CTS Workshop, Coimbra, Portugal 1 - 3 July, 2004

CTS Board:

Professor Andrei Agrachev(Co-director)
Doctor Françoise Lamnabhi-Lagarrigue(Co-director)
Professor Frank Allgower
Professor Okko H. Bosgra
Professor Bronislaw Jakubczyk
Professor Gauthier Sallet
Professor Fatima Silva Leite
Professor Paul Van Dooren
Professor Alan Zinober

 

 

Download the CTS poster

 

Who can apply

Each doctoral student in this programme will have a "Home Institute" (not necessarily a CTS partner) and a "Host Institute" (a CTS partner). The training at the Control Training Site will be recognized as an integral part of the doctoral studies as confirmed in writing by the supervisor of the doctoral studies in the home university. The main research activity will be carried out at the Home Institute (at least 70% of the doctorate studies, two years) while the remaining teaching or work will be carried out at the Host Institute (for a maximum period of 30% of the doctorate studies, which means one year).

How to apply

  1. The candidate can apply for a fellowship to any of the twenty-nine Host institutes making part of the CTS except those that are based in the country of the candidate’s nationality or in the same country of the candidate’s recent centre of activity, i.e. the country where the candidate has been working/studying for more than 12 months during the last two years prior to the selection.

  2. How and where to apply: The candidate should send his/her detailed Curriculum Vitae and an application form (motivation, research project, CTS added value to the doctoral studies, letter(s) of recommendation etc.…) with all its details both to the CTS directors, Andrei Agrachev and Françoise Lamnabhi-Lagarrigue, and to the responsible person of the CTS Host institute.

  3. Evaluation procedure: The Host institute, where the candidate has applied to, will carry out the selection procedure. The Host Institute will nominate a deputy supervisor for the Fellow (any CTS participant).

 

The co-directors will supervise the selection procedure in order:

  1. to guarantee equal opportunities to the applicants from all the European Community Member and Associated States,

  2. to guarantee that the main CTS training objectives is fulfilled ,

  3. to maintain the CTS multidisciplinary character by guaranteeing equal opportunities between mathematically-oriented and engineering-oriented proposals

  4. and to maintain a good level of quality of the selected candidates.

 

The selected candidates have to be approved of by the European Commission which will verify that all the constraints and rules of the Marie Curie Training Sites programme have been taken into consideration. Once the administrative check by the Commission (normally less than 10 days) has been finalised, each Host Institute will contact the candidates whose proposal has been positively evaluated and send them two copies of a contract for the fellowships. The candidate must sign and return the two copies of the contract to the selected Host institute within 7 days from receipt of the contract. The Host Institute will then countersign the two copies. One copy of the contract will be kept in the Host Institute, another copy will be given to the student.

Normally, Host Institutes propose and advertise their projects. However, students can suggest their own projects for a visit in a Host Institute. In this case, the student should prepare an abstract with a detailed description of the project he/she would like to carry out. The student should then contact the person in charge of the CTS in the Host Institute where he/she would like to complete his/her project. If the chosen Host Institute is interested in pursuing the proposal made by the student, then the project should be advertised and the normal procedures for application, evaluation and confirmation of fellows should be followed.

 

Management of the stays at the Host institute

 

CNRS (the co-ordinator organization), will provide the scholarships of 1200 Euro per month to the selected candidate. The allowance of 900 Euro per month per fellow (plus 100 Euro per month per fellow for travel expenses) will be dedicated to cover all the costs that are related to the hosting of the fellow and the implementation of the project: inscription fees to the training places, any costs related to scientific events, conferences, summer schools, lectures, including costs for doctoral courses. Therefore, most of this budget will be sent to the fellow's host institute.

Besides numerous research projects, a large choice of courses will be delivered at the following places depending on the programmed teachings:

The other partners (not belonging or connected with the previously mentioned places) may also organize courses or summer schools in later years, preferably in combination with the five other partners. The courses (given in English) are independent of each other and as self-contained as possible. The programme does not require extensive experience in control theory and can be followed by anyone who has an undergraduate degree in engineering or mathematics with some basic knowledge of control. The scientific programme will cover in particular: -Adaptive and robust control, sliding-mode control; -Analysis of dynamical systems, bifurcation and control; -Applications in physical systems, Hamiltonian systems, systems with constraints; -Approximation methods; -Calculus of variations; -Classification and equivalence, invariants and normal forms; -Control of distributed parameter systems; -Control of discrete-event systems; -Design methods for linear control systems; -Distributed parameter systems; -Filtering; -Identification, estimation and observers; -Linear matrix inequalities in control; -Mathematical programming; -Model predictive control; -Non smooth analysis; -Optimal control; -Optimization methods; -Real-time analysis; -Sub-Riemannian geometry; -System identification; -Tracking, stabilization and motion planning.

Conferences and Schools
Banach Center Summer School on Mathematical Control Theory
Part I: The Mathematical Conference Center, Bedlewo, 2 - 14 September 2002,
Part II: Banach Center, Warsaw, 15 - 20 September 2002
Workshop Geometry in Nonlinear Control
The Mathematical Research and Conference Center, Bedlewo, Poland, june 16 - June 20, 2003
Trimester on: Dynamical and Control Systems
ICTP-SISSA, Italy, September 8 - December 7, 2003
European Control Conference ECC 2003
September 1-4, 2003, Cambridge, UK
Nonlinear and Optimal Control Theory
June 21 - 29, 2004, Cetraro, Italy
6th IFAC symposium on Nonlinear Control Systems (NOLCOS 2004)
September 1-3, 2004, Stuttgart, Germany

An indicative outline programme for a fellow will be about 10 hours of lectures per week. The rest of the time will be dedicated to home-works, free studies, including coaching and research training, and for the fellows who have already started their PhD, they may continue these studies. The fellow will be supervised according to the procedures of the Host institute. The personal supervision of each fellow will vary according to the different Institutes, depending on the volume of courses and depending on the PhD progress. A minimum of 2 hours of supervision each week will be guaranteed. The fellow will attend the programmed lectures for his visit and regularly meet his supervisor.

It will be possible to download lecture notes of all the CTS courses in the CTS Web site.

The work carried out by the Host fellow will be monitored with reference to the final report of his research activity, attendance at CTS courses and eventual experimental work carried out, journal and conference papers, attendance to symposia and other activities carried out in the hosting Institute. The information relative to the attendance to lectures, seminars, symposia must be kept by the Host institute and made available to the European Commission when required for monitoring purposes.

CTS Host Institutes and Local responsibles

#1 Universiteit Gent, Belgium Dirk Aeyels
#2 Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium Georges Bastin
#3 University of Liege, Belgium Rodolphe Sepulchre
#4 University of Stuttgart, Germany Frank Allgower
#5 University of Augsburg, Germany Fritz Colonius
#6 University of Wuerzburg, Germany Uwe Helmke
#7 INRIA, Rocquencourt, France Pierre-Alexandre Bliman
#8 Université Paris Sud, Orsay, France and Jean-Michel Coron and
CNRS-L2S, Gif-sur-Yvette, France Romeo Ortega
#9 Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan, France Michel Fliess
#10 Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France Jean-Paul Gauthier
#11 Ecole Superieure d'Electricité, Gif-sur-Yvette, France Patrick Boucher
#12 INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France Jean-Baptiste Pomet
#13 Ecole Superieure des Mines de Paris, France Laurent Praly
#14 Université de Versailles St Quentin, France Jean-Pierre Puel
#15 INSA, Rouen, France Witold Respondek
#16 INRIA, Metz, France Gauthier Sallet
#17 SISSA, Trieste, Italy Andrei Agrachev
#18 University of Roma "la Sapienza", Italy Alberto Isidori and
IAC - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy Benedetto Piccoli
#19 University of Roma "Tor Vergata", Italy Riccardo Marino
#20 University of Siena, Italy Paolo Nistri
#21 University of Florence, Italy Gianna Stefani
#22 Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands Okko H. Bosgra
#23 Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands Henk Nijmeijer
#24 University of Twente, The Netherlands Arjan van der Schaft
#25 Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland Bronislaw Jakubczyk
#26 University of Aveiro, Portugal Vitor Neves
#27 University of Coimbra, Portugal Fatima Silva Leite
#28 Imperial College, London, United Kingdom Alessandro Astolfi
#29 University of Sheffield, United Kingdom Alan Zinober

 

 

Number of visitors since October 2001

National Contact Points (NCPs) are the first point of contact for queries on the Human Potential Programme. The NCP network offers a contact person/s in each of the EU Member and Associated States, who have a detailed understanding of the programme and are kept up to date by the Commission of any changes to the planned schedule of activities:   Austria - Belgium - Bulgaria - Cyprus - Czech Republic - Denmark - Estonia - Finland - France - Germany - Greece - Hungary - Iceland - Ireland - Israel - Italy - Latvia - Liechtenstein - Lithuania - Iceland - Luxembourg - Malta - Netherlands - Norway - Poland - Portugal - Romania - Slovak Republic - Slovenia - Spain - Sweden - Switzerland - United Kingdom

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