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ESE Guest Seminar – “The Nonlinear Small-Gain Theory for Networks and Control”
November 21, 2025 at 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
The world is nonlinear and linked. In this talk, I will present the origin of the small-gain theory and show that it serves as an important systematic tool for addressing two fundamental problems for networks: When is a dynamical network robustly stable? When can a dynamical network be made robustly stable by feedback? As an illustration, we show how the small-gain theory can be applied to unify solutions to event-triggered nonlinear control and provide novel solutions to distributed feedback optimization. Finally, if time permits, I will discuss briefly learning-based control, a new direction in control theory, that aims to integrate machine learning and nonlinear control techniques to relax the conservativeness of small-gain designs.
Zhong-Ping Jiang
Institute Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and an Affiliate Professor of Civil and Urban Engineering, NYU
Zhong-Ping Jiang received the M.Sc. degree in statistics from the University of Paris XI, France, in 1989, and the Ph.D. degree in automatic control and mathematics from ParisTech-Mines, France, in 1993, under the direction of Prof. Laurent Praly.
Currently, he is an Institute Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and an affiliate professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at the Tandon School of Engineering, New York University. His main research interests include stability theory, robust/adaptive/distributed nonlinear control, robust adaptive dynamic programming, reinforcement learning and their applications to information, mechanical and biological systems. In these fields, he has written six books and is the author/co-author of about 600 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers.
Prof. Jiang is a recipient of the prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship Award from the Australian Research Council, CAREER Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation, JSPS Invitation Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Distinguished Overseas Chinese Scholar Award from the NSF of China, and several best paper awards. He has served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Senior Editor and Associate Editor for numerous journals, and is among the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers and Stanford’s Top 2% Most Highly Cited Scientists. In 2022, he received the Excellence in Research Award from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Prof. Jiang is a foreign member of the Academia Europaea (Academy of Europe) and an ordinary member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and also is a Fellow of the IEEE, IFAC, CAA, AAIA and AAAS.