Biology Goes Nonlinear
Frank Allgower, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Abstract:
Over the last decades nonlinear systems and control methods have evolved into important enabling tools for many engineering applications in essentially all areas from mechatronics, over the automotive sector to, for example, aerospace solutions. This trend will continue and our field is well positioned to contribute to the advancement in engineering in the years to come. The 21st century has, however, been noted to be the century of biology and new technologies and methods are vastly accelerating the pace of discovery in biology and medicine with a growing impact on our lives. Systems biology, the systems level understanding and investigation of biological phenomena, and synthetic biology, the combination of science and engineering to design and build novel biological functions and systems, are one of those key methods that act as a driving force for progress in biological research. In this talk the role of nonlinear systems and control theory for the development of these new biological research fields will be discussed. By means of several examples, among others from oncology (cancer research) and osteology (bone research), it will be shown how methods from nonlinear systems and control can help to better understand the basis of life.
Biography:
Frank Allgöwer is director of the Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control at the University of Stuttgart in Germany. He studied Engineering Cybernetics and Applied Mathematics in Stuttgart and at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) respectively and received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Stuttgart. Prior to his present appointment he held a professorship in the electrical engineering department at ETH Zurich and visiting positions at Caltech, the NASA Ames Research Center, the DuPont Company and the University of California at Santa Barbara. Frank’s main interests in research and teaching are in the area of systems and control with emphasis on the development of new methods for the analysis and control of nonlinear systems and networks of systems. Of equal importance to the theoretical developments are practical applications and the experimental evaluation of benefits and limitations of the developed methods. Applications span a wide range from mechatronic systems to systems biology. At present Frank is Editor for the journal Automatica and for the Springer Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences series and serves as Associate Editor and on the editorial board of several further journals. He is on the Council of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), and is chairman of the International Affairs Committee of the IEEE Control System Society since 2007. From 2006 to 2009 Frank was IEEE CSS Distinguished Lecturer. Frank received several recognitions for his work including the appointment as IFAC Fellow, the Landeslehrpreis Baden-Württemberg (state teaching award), and the Leibniz prize, which is the most prestigious price in science and engineering awarded by the German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
