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.