College of Engineering Spring 2023 Seminar Series: Sean Andersson

Title: Control for Sensing and Estimation of Spatiotemporal Systems

Abstract: There are many applications where we need to learn about a system that varies in both space and time. In such applications, measurements may be costly (in whatever metric you like) and the number of times we can sample may be limited. In this talk we describe our work on using systems and control theory to design and deploy algorithms for optimally (in that metric) collecting measurements to estimate something of interest. We focus on two particular application domains. In the first, persistent monitoring, we seek controllers that steer a collection of agents to maintain the best information possible about a set of dynamic targets in the environment. In the second, real-time, feedback-driven, single particle tracking, we create algorithms to track individual biological macromolecules while collecting measurements that are maximally informative relative to some parameter of interest.

Bio: Professor Sean B. Andersson received his B.S. in Applied and Engineering Physics from Cornell University (1994), his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (1995) and his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park (2003). He worked at AlliedSignal Aerospace and then Aerovironment before pursuing his Ph.D. After completing that degree, he was a Lecturer in Applied Mathematics before joining Boston University in 2003 where he is currently Professor and Interim Chair of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Systems Engineering. His research interests are in systems and control theory with applications in biophysics and robotics.

When 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm on Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Location ENG 245, 110 Cummington Mall