Team

Paul M.J. Van den Hof

Professor (project leader)

Paul Van den Hof is ERC Advanced Research Grant holder and project leader of this project. He is full professor and former chair of the Control Systems Group at the Department of Electrical Engineering at TU/e, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. His expertise is in system identification and model-based control and optimization. He is an IEEE and IFAC Fellow, and Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Besides the ERC project, he is also leading the related Proof-of-Concept Grant project “Dynamic Network Toolbox for Data-Driven Model Learning and Diagnostics” (2024-2025).

WPs: WP1, WP2, WP3, WP4, WP5

Xiaodong Cheng

Guest Researcher

Xiaodong Cheng was a postdoctoral researcher with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, during 2019 and 2020. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in system and control engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, in 2011 and 2014, respectively. He received the Ph.D. degree (with distinction cum laude) in 2018 from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. His main research interests include model reduction, control, and identification of network systems. After spending a post-doctoral period at the University of Cambrige (UK), he is now an Assistant Professor at Wageningen University and Research in The Netherlands.

WPs: WP2

Arne Dankers

Guest researcher

Arne Dankers received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary in Calgary, Canada, and a Ph.D. degree in September 2014 from the Delft Center for Systems and Control at the Delft University of Technology in Delft, The Netherlands. His PhD-Thesis “System Identification in Dynamic Networks” was the first to introduce dynamic networks in the system identification problem. This laid the foundation for the current ERC project.
After working at Hifi Engineering in Calgary, Canada, where he applied network identification for leak detection in pipelines, he has joined the Faculty of the University of Calgary.

WPs: WP1, WP2

Harm H.M. Weerts

Guest Researcher and former PhD student

Harm H.M. Weerts was born in Bergen, The Netherlands, in 1989. He received his
BSc degree from the Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Venlo, the Netherlands, in 2010, and his MSc degree in Systems and Control from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, in 2014. In November 2018 he received the PhD degree from Eindhoven University of Technology, for a PhD thesis entitled: “Identifiability and Identification Methods for Dynamic Networks”. After working as a mechatronics consultant for Alten Netherlands, he has joined MI-Partners BV in Veldhoven, The Netherlands, as a Dynamics Engineer.

WPs: WP1, WP2

Shengling Shi

Guest Researcher and former PhD student

Shengling Shi received his bachelor degree in Automotive Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology, China, and his master degree (with great appreciation) in Automotive Technology from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in March 2017. The title of his master thesis was “Decentralized and Distributed Model Predictive Control of Vehicle Platoons”. From 2017-2021 mhe was PhD researcher in the SYSDYNET project, where on 1 September 2021 he obtained his PhD degree for a thesis entitled “Topological Aspects of Linear Dynamic Networks: Identifiability and Identification”. After completing postdoctoral research projects at the Delft Center for Systems and Control (DCSC), and MIT, Cambridge, USA, he is now moved to Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, as an Assistant Professor in DCSC.

WPs: WP2

Khartik Raghavan Ramaswamy

Guest Researcher and former PhD student

Karthik Raghavan was born in Chennai, India in 1989. He received his Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronics in 2011 from Anna University, India. He worked as Control & Automation engineer at Larsen & Toubro for 4 years after his bachelors. During the period of his work he completed his MBA degree. In 2017, he received his M.Sc. degree in Systems and Control (with great appreciation) at Eindhoven University of Technology. His M.Sc. thesis, entitled “Improved sampling for ensemble based reservoir optimization with and without uncertainty” was supervised by Paul Van den Hof. During the period 2017-2022, Karthik worked as a PhD candidate in the project System Identification in Dynamic Networks (SYSDYNET), and was awarded the PhD degree (cum laude) in May 2022 for his thesis entitled, “A guide to learning modules in a dynamic network”, under supervision of Paul Van den Hof at TU/e. Since March 2022 he is employed by ASML, Veldhoven, The Netherlands, currently as a Mechatronics and Control Researcher.

Wps: WP1

Tom R.V. Steentjes

Guest researcher and former PhD student

Tom Steentjes was born in Tilburg, the Netherlands, in 1993. He received his BSc degree in Electrical Engineering (Automotive) in 2014, from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). In 2016, he completed the Systems and Control master’s program at the TU/e. The MSc thesis, entitled “Feedback stabilization of nonlinear systems: “universal” constructions towards real-life applications’’, was supervised by dr. Alina Doban and dr. Mircea Lazar. The MSc degree was granted with distinction Cum Laude. From 2017-2022 he has been working as a PhD student in the Control Systems group, Department of Electrical Engineering, TU/e. In June 2022 he was awarded the PhD degree for his thesis entitled “Data-driven methods for distributed control of interconnected linear systems”. Currently he is working as a EUV Source Mechatronics Designer/Integrator at ASML, Veldhoven, The Netherlands.

WPs: WP4

E.M.M. (Lizan) Kivits

Guest Researcher and former PhD student

Lizan Kivits received her BSc degree in Electrical Engineering in 2014 and her MSc degree in Systems and Control (with great appreciation) in 2017, both at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), the Netherlands. Her master thesis was entitled “Control Relevant Model Reduction for Disturbance Decoupling” and was supervised by prof.dr. S. Weiland. In February 2024 she was awarded the PhD degree for her thesis entitled, “Modelling and Identification of Physical Linear Networks”, for which she received the 3rd Price in the election of the PhD-Thesis Award of the Dutch Institute of Systems and Control (DISC). Since October 2024 she is working as a postdoctoral researcher at DIFFER, the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research.

WPs: WP2, WP4

Mannes Dreef

Researcher and software developer

Mannes Dreef, born in Arnhem, the Netherlands in 1994, received his BSc degree in Electrical Engineering (Automotive) in 2016 and his MSc degree in Systems and Control (with great appreciation) in 2018 from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His MSc thesis entitled: “H-infinity and H-2 optimal sampled-data controller synthesis: A hybrid systems approach with generalized disturbance and performance channels” was supervised by dr.ir. M.C.F. Donkers. Mannes worked in the project as a researcher and software developer. He is interested in networks with aperiodic, asynchronous and event-triggered sampling mechanisms, and was involved in the development of the SYSDYNET Matlab App and Toolbox in the period 2019-2022. Since January 2023 he is working as a Design Engineer Alignment at ASML, Veldhoven, The Netherlands.

WPs: WP3, WP5

Stefanie Fonken

Former temporary PhD student

Stefanie Fonken, born in Tilburg, the Netherlands in 1991, received her Bachelor in Mechatronic Engineering in 2014 from Fontys University of Applied Sciences in Eindhoven. After her Bachelor she worked as a Machine Engineer at Bosch Transmission Technology for 3 years. In 2020, she received her MSc degree in Systems and Control (with distinction cum laude) at Eindhoven Technical University (TU/e). Her MSc thesis, entitled “Multi-step scalable least squares method for network identification with unknown noise topology” was supervised by prof.dr.ir. P.M.J. Van den Hof. From January 2021 until December 2023 she worked as a PhD student on multi-step methods and data-informativity conditions for single module identification in dynamic networks.

WPs: WP1, WP2, WP5

Ilja van Oort

Research software engineer

Ilja van Oort obtained his MSc degree in Biomedical Engineering (Cum Laude) from the Eindhoven University of Technology in 2022. His MSc thesis, entitled “Data-driven blood glucose dynamics identification from free-living diabetes patient data” was supervised by Natal van Riel. Finishing up his MSc degree, he worked for three months at the Institute of Computational Biology at Helmholtz Munich. He is currently working as a research software developer in the project since April 2023, and as such responsible for the development of the SYSDYNET MATLAB App and Toolbox for data-driven modeling in dynamic networks. In particular, his focus is on the development of the graphical user interfaces, and the integration of the software algorithms.

Wim Liebregts

Research software engineer

Desen Liang

MSc Systems and Control, 2024

Development of a multi-step frequency domain algorithm for identification of diffusively coupled networks. Continuous-time models can be identified of either a full network or a subnetwork. Currently Desen is working at Huawei Technologies Co. in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, P.R. China.

John Baek

BSc Electrical Engineering, 2025

Implementation of a Topology Estimation window, following and extending the Bayesian topology estimation algorithm of Shi et al. (2019), and implementing the Empirical Bayes Local Direct Method (EBLDM) algorithm of V.C. Rajagopal et al. (2020) for use in the multi-step identification of single target modules, according to Fonken et al. (2023).

Tijs Donkers

Associate Professor

Tijs Donkers is currently an Associate Professor in the EE – Control Systems Group of Eindhoven University of Technology, with a research focus on automotive systems and energy management systems. He served as a supervisor of (temporary) PhD student  Mannes Dreef.

WPs: WP3

Mircea Lazar

Associate Professor

Mircea Lazar (born in Iasi, Romania, 1978) received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Control
Engineering from the Technical University Gh. Asachi of Iasi, Romania (2002) and the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands (2006), respectively. For the Ph.D. thesis he received the EECI (European Embedded Control Institute) Ph.D. award. He is currently holding a position of Associate Professor in the Control Systems group of the Electrical Engineering Faculty at the Eindhoven University of Technology. He is an active member of the IFAC Technical Committee 2.3 Non-linear control systems. His research interests lie in stability theory, distributed control, construction of Lyapunov functions and constrained control of nonlinear systems, including model predictive control. In this project he served as supervisor of PhD student Tom Steentjes, who graduated in June 2022.

WPs: WP4

Giulio Bottegal

Guest Researcher

Giulio obtained his PhD from the University of Padova in 2013, working on latent
variable stochastic models. After the Phd, he spent three years (2013-2016) as a post doc at the Automatic Control Lab of KTH (Sweden) and one year (2016-2017) as a post doc at ESAT, KU Leuven (Belgium). Since April 2017, he is a post doc at the Department of Electrical Engineering of TU Eindhoven. He was a visiting Phd student at the Australian National University for a six-month period (2011-2012), and a visiting fellow at the same university (2013). In 2015, he spent a one-month visit at the CSPLab of the University of Melbourne (Australia). His research interests are primarily in the fields of system identification and machine learning. Since 2018 he is working as Metrology Archiotext at ASML, Veldhoven, the Netherlands.

WPs: WP1, WP2, WP3

Jobert Ludlage

Researcher

WPs: WP5

Mohsin Siraj

Post doc (until 1 November 2017)

WPs: WP1, WP5