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ABSTRACT Synchronization is the science of order in time and studies the ways rhythms become spontaneously organized. It is ubiquitous in nature and in engineering applications: groups of fireflies, neurons or pacemaker cells synchronize spontaneously; fish move in formations to escape predators and improve foraging; robots can coordinate to accomplish tasks more efficiently. In this talk I will combine concepts popular in system theory and graph theory to study synchronization in both engineered and biological networked systems. In the first part of the talk, I will present a design methodology to synchronize networked systems under mild connectedness assumptions on the (possibly time-varying and unidirectional) communication topology. I will use this methodology to address a number of synchronization problems including stabilization of collective motion in the three-dimensional Euclidean space. In the second part of the talk, I will present a new formalism to analyze synchronization in networks of complex systems motivated by biochemical networks. The synchronization conditions are provided by combining the input-output properties of the subsystems with information about the structure of the network. The work is motivated by cellular networks where signaling occurs both internally, through interactions of species, and externally, through intercellular signaling. The theory is illustrated providing synchronization conditions for networks of genetic oscillators. (The first part of the talk is joint work with N. Leonard and R. Sepulchre, the second part is joint work with M. Arcak and E. Sontag) SPEAKER BIO Dr. Scardovi received the Laurea degree in Computer Engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Genoa, Italy, in 2001 and 2005 respectively. In 2005 he was Adjunct Professor of System Identification and Data Analysis at the University of Lecce, Italy. From 2005 to 2007 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Liège, Belgium. He is currently a postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. His research interests include nonlinear synchronization phenomena in engineered and biological systems, decentralized control for motion coordination, switching systems and active state estimation. Dr. Luca Scardovi |
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