Author: Stephan Trenn

Shaoxuan Cui receives ECC 2026 Outstanding Student Paper Award

Dr. Shaoxuan Cui has been awarded the Outstanding Student Paper Award at the 24th European Control Conference (ECC 2026), held in Reykjavík, Iceland, from July 7 to 10, 2026. The award recognizes his paper, “Markov Chains and Random Walks with Memory on Hypergraphs: A Tensor-Based Approach”, co-authored with Lingfei Wang, Hildeberto Jardón-Kojakhmetov, Karl H. Johansson, and Ming Cao.

At the time of submission, Dr. Cui was a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen, jointly supervised by Prof. Ming Cao from the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen (ENTEG) and Dr. Hildeberto Jardón-Kojakhmetov from the Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence. He completed his PhD in March 2026 and is currently a postdoctoral researcher collaborating with Prof. Cao.

The awarded paper introduces a unified tensor-based framework for modeling Markov chains with memory and random walks on hypergraphs. It provides novel analytical tools for studying the steady-state and convergence properties of complex network processes, addressing both higher-order interactions and memory effects.

Martina Vanelli joins SMS group

On June 1, 2026, Dr. Martina Vanelli started a position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor within the Smart Manufacturing Systems (SMS) group at the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen (ENTEG) at the University of Groningen. Her research focuses on the modeling, design, and control of multi-agent and networked systems, primarily with applications to energy markets and social and economic networks.
She received the B.Sc., M.Sc. (cum laude), and Ph.D. (with honors) degrees in Applied Mathematics from Politecnico di Torino, Italy, in 2017, 2019, and 2024, respectively. Her doctoral research, co-funded by Machine Learning Reply, focused on game-theoretic models for electricity markets. From February 2024 to May 2026, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the ICTEAM Institute of UCLouvain, Belgium, where she worked on nonlinear network identification and data-driven control.

Jacquelien Scherpen and Arjan van der Schaft elected as EUCA Fellow 2026

The EUCA Fellow award has been initiated ‘to recognize persons who have made outstanding contributions and accomplishments in the field of interest of the European Control Association (EUCA)’. The first round of awards takes place in 2026 and comprises ten awards. Jacquelien Scherpen and Arjan van der Schaft are proud to be selected for this first class of EUCA fellows.

FARMLAB project funded by €2 million

FARMLAB, led by the University of Groningen researchers Saeed Ahmed and Bayu Jayawardhana, has been awarded €2 million from the NWO (Dutch Research Council) NXTGEN Hightech programme.

Together with Wageningen University & Research, TNO, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, and industry partners Green Dino, SMI Dokkum, Batenburg Beenen, DEMCON industrial systems, and ABdrone, the consortium will develop autonomous drones and ground robots for precision and regenerative agriculture, with real-world testing and national scaling ahead.

For more information see the university announcement.

Jaap Eising joins DTPA group

On January 1, 2026, Dr. Jaap Eising started his position as a Tenure Track Assistant Professor of AI in Control within the DTPA group. His research interests are understanding and designing learning architectures, aiming at the development of new data-based control methods for hard to model systems.

Jaap earned his MSc and PhD in Mathematics from the University of Groningen in 2017 and 2021 respectively. His doctoral thesis focused on the analysis of conically constrained dynamical systems and fundamentals of data-driven controls. Followed by the PhD was a position as postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego, working on both data-based control and optimization. After this a he moved to ETH Zurich, where he became a senior scientist, expanding towards the links between controls, machine learning and algorithm design.

IFAC High Impact Paper Award for Arjan van der Schaft

Arjan van der Schaft together with his coauthors Romeo Ortega, Bernhard Maschke and Gerardo Escobar have been awarded the High Impact Paper Award 2026 for their paper “Interconnection and damping assignment passivity-based control of port-controlled Hamiltonian systems” which appeared in Automatica, Vol. 38, pp. 585-596, April 2002.

This paper marks the start of the theory of nonlinear passivity-based control of physical systems represented in port-Hamiltonian form. Characteristic feature of this theory, and of its applications in various physical domains, is that the obtained control laws are often intrinsically robust and have a direct physical interpretation in terms of energy. The paper received around 2000 quotations according to Google Scholar. 

The presentation of the award will take place in the framework of the Opening Ceremony at the Busan IFAC World Congress on Sunday, 23 August 2026. This award is one of IFAC’s major awards and consists of a medal, certificate and prize money.

Bart Besselink receives ERC Consolidator Grant

The research proposal “Contracts for Control System Design (COCOS)” of Bart Besselink will receive 2 Mio € funding by the European Research Council (ERC). The ERC Consolidator Grant is a prestigious research funding program to support researchers who are in the early stages of their independent research careers and have demonstrated significant potential for conducting high-quality research. Bart proposes a new approach for control system design based on contracts, inspired by ideas from software design in computer science. He will develop a contract theory for control system design that includes techniques for the automatic design of component contracts aimed at optimizing system-level performance, and control design for contract satisfaction. The practical relevance of the theory will be tested by case studies in high-tech manufacturing systems and autonomous vehicles, and supported by efficient computational tools.

ECC 2024 pre-conference workshop

Bart Besselink is co-organizing  the pre-conference workshop on “Modular Approaches for Design and Verification in Autonomous Driving” at the European Control Conference ECC (25-28 June, 2024) in Stockholm.

The main goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers from academia and industry to discuss the challenges in autonomous system design, share recent developments in component-based methodologies for design and verification, and exchange ideas on topics including system engineering, (software) verification, and modularity. Aiming to strengthen the connections between industry and academia, the workshop includes speakers from both industry and academia and will be closed with a panel discussion. The workshop will be accessible for interested ECC participants and does not assume prior expert knowledge.

Michele Cucuzzella joins DPTA group as Associate Professor

Dr. Michele Cucuzzella has recently joined the Discrete Technology & Production Automation (DTPA) group within ENTEG as associate professor. His research will mainly focus on the design and analysis of nonlinear control systems with application to the energy domain and smart complex systems such as power systems, district heating, etc., contributing to the development of a more efficient and sustainable energy system.

Michele received the M.Sc. degree (Hons.) in Electrical Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Systems and Control from the University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, in 2014 and 2018, respectively. From 2021 to 2024 he was Assistant Professor of Systems and Control at the University of Pavia and guest Researcher at the University of Groningen. Since 2023 he is visiting Associate Professor at the Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan. From 2017 until 2020, he was a Postdoc at the University of Groningen.