Category: Uncategorized

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.