Jan C. Willems Center for Systems and Control
World leading research in Systems and Control at the University of Groningen
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, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bayu Jayawardhana is appointed as of 1 January 2024 as scientific director of Dutch Institute of Systems and Control (DISC), the interuniversity research institute and graduate school that unites all university groups in the Netherlands that are active in systems and control theory and engineering. He succeeds Henk Nijmeijer (emeritus TU Eindhoven) who has himself been a graduate of the University of Groningen. Furthermore, Stephan Trenn has replaced Jacquelien Scherpen as the University of Groningen representative at the DISC board.
Our colleague Prof. Jacquelien Scherpen will be the new Rector Magnificus of the University of Groningen. The appointment which start at 1 September 2023 will be for four years.
The Faculty Board of the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE) has decided to create the position of FSE Director of Engineering. As from July 1, 2022, Prof. Jacquelien Scherpen will be the first to hold this position. The main responsibilities of the FSE Director of Engineering will be to strengthen research collaboration in the area of engineering in the full width of the faculty, to set up new collaborations between FSE and the engineering industry, and to represent FSE in regional and national initiatives and discussions on engineering. Many of these activities are conducted through the Groningen Engineering Center, which is led by the FSE Director of Engineering.
The Board of the University has appointed Ming Cao as Director of the Jantina Tammes School, the interdisciplinary platform that focuses on digital innovation, artificial intelligence, and technological progress. The School represents an important new instrument for interacting with, and contributing to, society. It will provide a place where the various academic disciplines can meet and join forces to conduct research projects, teach, and generally smooth the way for dialogue with and about society. Ming Cao, Professor of Networks and Robotics, is looking forward to stimulating interdisciplinary collaboration. ‘The Jantina Tammes School brings together all of the interested parties in the up-and-coming digital society, allowing them to get the maximum benefits from and make the maximum contribution to digitization, digital technology, and artificial intelligence. We are preparing our students, staff, and partners for a promising, but challenging, future.’