Researchers working with ModConFlex and their Research interests

Mario A. Sinani is a ModConFlex Researcher at the Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College London. His research under the supervision of Andrew Wynn and Rafael Palacios focuses on dynamical systems, control theory and machine learning, specifically pertaining to high order nonlinear systems and fluid-solid interaction. He is currently developing novel mathematical analysis and data-driven model discovery methods for nonlinear control of highly flexible structures interacting with fluid flows.

He received his BSc and MSc in Mechanical Engineering with a focus in Control Theory, Dynamical Systems and Robotics from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. His thesis on event-triggered nonlinear model predictive control (ET-NMPC) for quadrotor trajectory tracking problems was published at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2023).

Prior to joining Imperial College London, he worked as a researcher in particle detector technologies at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland as well as an R&D engineer developing novel dynamic light control systems in Zurich, Switzerland.

Yuhan Su is a ModConFlex Researcher and a PhD student under the supervision of Xiaowei Zhao in the Intelligent Control and Smart Energy Research Group at the School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.

Originally from China, Yuhan obtained his master‘s degree in Informatics & Electronics from Xiamen University, Xiamen, China. During his master’s program, Yuhan focused on research topics including intelligent control, adaptive control, and adaptive dynamic programming, with applications in complex systems under various physical and task-oriented limitations. His current research interests primarily lie in developing reinforcement learning-based control methods for wind farms and other wind energy systems.

Filippo Testa is from the region of Abruzzo in Italy and is a PhD candidate at the Applied Mathematics Department of the University of Twente, in the Netherlands, with Hans Zwart. He is also an MSCA Researcher in the Europe Horizon ModConFlex project. His background is in abstract Mathematics: he studied for both his Bachelor (“Laurea triennale in matematica”) and Master’s degree (“Laurea magistrale in matematica”) at the University of Pisa. He was initially interested in abstract algebra, but moved towards analysis during his Master’s, writing a thesis on a classical PDE subject: Kato and Fujita’s semigroup approach to the Navier-Stokes equations.

Filippo Testa presently works on infinite dimensional systems theory, in particular within the framework of port-Hamiltonian systems and his PhD project is about generalizing some known results for 1-dimensional physical systems to multi-dimensional ones, using tools from differential geometry.

Alan Josué Valadez Altamira is an MSCA Researcher in the Power Electronics for Renewable Energy group at Tel Aviv University within the Horizon Europe ModConFlex project.

Alan obtained his bachelor's degree in mechanical and electrical engineering from the Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico, and a master's degree in electrical engineering from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma, Mexico City, Mexico. His master's thesis delved into integrating wind farms into power systems, ensuring compliance with grid codes using economic dispatch models.

While pursuing a PhD under the supervision of George Weiss, Alan focuses on modelling floating wind farms and their seamless integration into the electrical grid while prioritizing adherence to stringent security requirements outlined in grid codes.

Ziqi Wang is from China and currently an MSCA Researcher and PhD student with Enrique Zuazua at the Chair for Dynamics, Control, Machine Learning and Numerics at the Department of Mathematics, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen Nürnberg. Before that, he received his master’s degree in control science and engineering from Beihang University, Beijing, and his bachelor’s degree in aircraft design and engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China. His research interests include guidance and control of complex dynamical systems and learning-based control algorithm design.

In the framework of the ModConFlex project, he is working on developing data-driven modeling and control of fluid-structure interactions and implementing federated learning techniques to utilize diverse data while maintaining privacy constraints.

Zhuo Xu is an MSCA Researcher and a PhD student at the Institute of Mathematics of Bordeaux, France, with Marius Tucsnak. He is from Hubei, People's Republic of China; and earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, respectively Operations Research and Cybernetics, from Northeast Normal University in Changchun, Jilin Province, China.

His Master's thesis focused on the analysis of fluid water-solid interaction systems in radial cases. It involved describing the vertical movement of a rigid body in a cylinder. Initially, he applied Hamilton's principle to derive a nonlinear system. Subsequently, he utilized the Banach fixed-point theorem to establish the well-posedness of the nonlinear system. His primary interest lies in the control theory of fluid and fluid water-solid interaction systems, encompassing optimal control, null controllability, time-optimal control, and related areas.

His PhD research will revolve around control theory in fluid equations or fluid water-solid interaction systems.