Dear all,
This is the last edition of the DISC Newsletter of the year 2025. Maybe you also share the feeling that the year 2025 has gone by very quickly… We hope you can look back at a good year and hopefully next year will be a peaceful and succesful new year.
We welcome the new members of the DISC community and we wish PhD-students who are now finalizing their thesis much success!
We are happy to announce the DISC Winter School on Contraction Theory for Learning-Based
Control of Nonlinear Systems! The Winter School takes place from 27-29 January 2026 at Eindhoven University of Technology. Registration is now open! Please find more information here: DISC Winter School 2026-DEF
Further you can find a Call for the Summer School 2026 below. We truly look forward to receiving your proposal for another succesful edition of the DISC Summer School.
In 2027, DISC will announce for the first time the winner of the DISC Best Teacher Award. Based on the input of the participants of the DISC courses, UnitDISC will yearly determine the winner of the Best Teacher Award, who will be announced during the Benelux Meeting.
Promotors can nominate one of their graduated PhD-students for the DISC Best Thesis Award 2025, if the graduated PhD students meet certain criteria. This annual award is for the best dissertation written by a DISC PhD student. Nominations can be handed in by the first promotor till 15 December 2025. The jury members of DISC Best Thesis Award 2025 are Ming Cao (University of Groningen), Tamas Keviczky (TU Delft) and Layla Ozkan (Eindhoven University of Technology).
The public award ceremony for the best thesis will take place during the Benelux Meeting 2026 (March 24–26, 2026 ) in Lommel, Belgium.
We wish you a festive month of December!
Bayu Jayawardhana, scientific director DISC
Maaike Kraeger-Holland, office manager DISC
DISC congratulates …
Wouter Hakvoort recently founded the research chair of Control and Mechatronics in the Department of Mechanics of Solids, Surfaces and Systems, Faculty of Engineering Technology, University of Twente. The research chair participates in the Robotics Centre and contributes to the education in the programmes of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics. The research is on motion and vibration control, with a focus on integrated mechatronic design by concurrent optimisation of mechanics and control, and control based on these mechanical models enhanced with data through learning and adaptation. Janset Dasdemir and Hakan Koroglu contribute to this research through their expertise in nonlinear control and on robust control by LMI-based analysis and synthesis, respectively. Applications are in precision mechatronics, robotics and smart manufacturing.
Ashish Cherukuri has been appointed to Associate Professor at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
As of September 9, 2025, Javier Alonso-Mora has been appointed professor of Mobile and Collaborative Robotics at the faculty Mechanical Engineering of TU Delft. His research focuses on developing methods and algorithms that enable mobile robots to move safely and reliably, to perform tasks in complex environments shared with humans, animals, or other robots, and to collaborate with each other.
In Fall 2025, two DISC courses – System Identification and Learning and Adaptive Control – are being lectured. In Winter and Spring 2026 more interesting DISC courses follow, please find the overview here: 2025-2026_DISC Course schedule
You can register through the DISC course platform on the DISC website. Registration closes ca. one week before the start of each course.
Registration now open!
When: 27-29 January 2026
Location: Eindhoven University of Technology Eindhoven
Costs: 180 Euro (excl. accommodation)
Main speakers: Hiroyasu Tsukamoto (Univ. Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign),
Sebastiaan v/d Eijnden (TU/e) and Amritam Das (TU/e)
Programme and registration: DISC Winter School 2026-DEF
Deadline registration: 15 January 2026
Save the date!
Benelux Meeting 2026 – March 24–26, 2026 in Lommel, Belgium.
More information will follow soon.
We are pleased to invite you to send in proposals for the DISC Summer School 2026. You can use the following instructions: Template_DISC_summer_school_proposals. Examples of DISC Summer Schools in the past can be found on Summer School – DISC (tudelft.nl) .
Thank you for sending us your proposal before 7 January 2026 to secr-disc-me@tudelft.nl with cc to dir-disc-me@tudelft.nl
In February 2026, the Board of DISC will decide which proposal will be applied for the DISC Summer School 2026.
We look forward to receiving your proposals!
Invitation to submit to the Open Invited Track for the IFAC World Congress 2026 on
“Resilient Cyber-Physical-Human Systems”
Overview
Cyber-physical-human systems (CPHS) form the backbone of modern infrastructure, from power grids and transportation networks to advanced robotics, healthcare systems, and manufacturing facilities. Their tightly coupled cyber, physical, and human components introduce new challenges in ensuring reliable, secure, and trustworthy operation. This open invited track offers leading experts working in the area of CPHS resilience and control the opportunity to present their latest research findings and methodologies.
Topics of interest
This track invites scientists, engineers, and stakeholders from government, industry, and academia to contribute theoretical and applied research papers. The topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
This track aims to create a platform between practitioners and control theorists to share knowledge and insights on the modeling and design of next-generation high-confidence CPHS that are secure and resilient to evolving cyber threats.
Submission
For author guidelines, please refer to the IFAC 2026 website https://ifac2026.org. All papers must be submitted electronically at https://ifac.papercept.net/. All papers must be prepared in a two-column format in accordance with the IFAC manuscript style. Please use the official IFAC instructions and template to prepare your contribution as a full-length draft paper and submit it online. Submission details are available on the conference website.
All submissions must be written in English. All papers that conform to submission guidelines will be peer-reviewed by IPC members.
The corresponding authors need to submit their paper online (in pdf format) as Open Invited Track Paper using the code: 89j17
Important deadlines
Regards,
Michelle Chong
Daniel Quevedo
Hideaki Ishii
Quanyan Zhu
| Help tip |
| Help to fight marine pollution. SeaClear2.0, a Horizon 2020 project led by TU Delft, DCSC, uses robotics, AI, and community action to identify and remove underwater litter. For building a global Marine Litter Photomap they could use your help. Marine litter Photomap – SeaClear2 |
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Visit Swedish WASP to the Netherlands
On October 7th, 36 PhD students and 2 staff members from within the Swedish WASP program visited the TU Delft! The Swedish WASP program (https://wasp-sweden.org/) is a large Swedish research initiative (~700 million EUR) over 15 years and the visitors have a broad background in the field of autonomous systems, AI, and software. They visited us as part of their graduate school-organized study trip to the Netherlands, during which they also visited the Technical University of Eindhoven and the University of Amsterdam. During the day, they got a broad overview of relevant research at the TU Delft by visiting a large variety of labs throughout the entire university. These included the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (Delft Center for Systems and Control and the Department of Cognitive Robotics), the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (including visits to the Multimedia Computing Group and the Sequential Decision Making section at the Intelligent Systems department), Lunar Zebro, the TUD Swarming Lab, and SAM XL. Bayu Jayawardhana also gave a short speech as scientic director of the Dutch Institute for Systems and Control (DISC). The day was very well received and resulted in interesting discussions. Thanks everyone who contributed to making this day a success and thank you to DISC for sponsoring the event.
Manon Kok – DCSC/TU Delft
Name: Vito Daniele Perfetta
Start date: 15/09/2025
Job title: PhD
TUD E-mail: V.D.Perfetta@tudelft.nl
Section: Learning and Autonomous Control, TU Delft
Supervisor: Dr. Cosimo Della Santina
Short introduction:
I recently joined the Cognitive Robotics (CoR) group, where my research will focus on the control of soft robots. I am enthusiastic about contributing to this exciting field and collaborating with the team. Outside of work, I enjoy reading, watching good films, and spending time outdoors hiking and exploring new places. Looking forward to giving my contribution and enjoying this journey!
Name: Fritz Engeln
Starting date: 1-9-2025
Function: PhD
Email: f.a.engeln@tudelft.nl
Group: ME-DCSC-Team Van Wingerden
Supervisor: Prof.dr.ir. Jan-Willem van Wingerden
Project: The field of future wind farms control
Introduction:
Hello everyone! My name is Fritz and I will start as a PhD student in September, working on data-driven wind farm control. I did my Master’s in Mechatronics at Hamburg University of Technology in Germany and came to Delft to write my Master’s thesis in data-driven control. I enjoyed it here so much that I decided to stay for my PhD. Outside the university, I enjoy being active outdoors. I love sailing and the Netherlands offers perfect opportunities for that, and I also like to go for runs.
Name: Ernst Lock
Starting date: 1-9-2025
Function: Junior Teacher
Email:e.a.lock@tudelft.nl
Group: ME-DCSC-Team De Schutter
Supervisor: Prof.dr.ir. Bart De Schutter
Introduction:
My name is Ernst Lock and I am excited to be the new Junior Docent at DCSC! I recently graduated from Mechanical Engineering, for which I wrote my thesis about flow. My thesis was about creating flow, a focused mental state, in humans when working with a robot. The combination of people, psychology and technology and how that all comes together is something I am very passionate about. I am looking forward to sharing my passion with future generations, hence this is why I decided to become a teacher. A little bit more about myself: I play the drums and do judo. Other hobbies include travelling, playing (board) games, painting minifigures and spending time with friends. I look forward to meeting you all and working together, I hope to have a chat with everyone.
Name: Zixuan Liu
Starting date: 01-10-2025
Position: PhD
Email: zixuan.liu@rug.nl
Group: DTPA
Supervisor: Prof. Ming Cao and Prof Bayu Jayawardhana
Project: Distributed Constrained Optimization with Privacy Protection
Introduction: Hello! I’m Zixuan Liu, and I’m excited to be starting my PhD at the University of Groningen in October, where I’ll be working with Prof. Ming Cao. Before this, I completed both my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at ShanghaiTech University. My research focuses on distributed optimization and opinion dynamics, and I look forward to working on new projects and meeting new colleagues.
Outside of my studies, I love exploring different types of music, watching birds and plants.
Name: Runqi Hu
Starting date: 01-10-2025
Position: PhD
Email: r.hu@rug.nl
Group: DTPA
Supervisor: Prof Stephan Trenn, Dr Saeed Ahmed, Dr Joel Ferguson
Project: Physics Informed Neural Networks for Modelling and Control of Energy Systems
Introduction:
My name is Runqi Hu. I am from China and recently. I have now joined the University of Groningen as a PhD candidate. My research will focus on data-driven predictive control for complex networks. I am excited to start this new chapter and look forward to collaborating with everyone.
Name: Maja Trumic
Starting date: 01-11-2025
Position: MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow
E-mail: m.trumic@tudelft.nl
Section: Department of Cognitive Robotics
Supervisor: Cosimo Della Santina
Introduction:
I am a robotics researcher from Serbia, joining TU Delft as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow to work on Soft-Scout — a project that explores how soft robots can autonomously navigate and perform inspection and maintenance in confined environments like aircraft engines or disaster-struck infrastructure. Under the supervision of Prof. Cosimo Della Santina, my work aims to develop advanced control and learning strategies that will enable a soft robot to precisely, adaptively and reliably perform tasks in such complex environments. Outside my core research, I am very interested in the role of creativity in technology ever since I have been involved in art-tech collaborations focused on creating futuristic prototypes.
Candidate: Zhongjie Hu
University and Department/Group: SMS, ENTEG
Thesis title: Data-driven control design for nonlinear systems
Promotor: Prof Claudio De Persis, Prof Nima Monshizadeh, Prof Pietro Tesi
Date: 10 October 2025
Location: Aula, Academy Building, Broerstraat 5 Groningen
Time: 11 a.m.
Candidate: Linda Ong
University and Department/Group: DTPA, ENTEG
Thesis title: Unobtrusive detection of poor sitting and eating behaviour in a healthy population
Promotor: Prof Ming Cao and Prof G.J. Verkerke
Date: 28 October 2025
Location: Aula, Academy Building, Broerstraat 5 Groningen
Time: 2.30 p.m.
