A Letter from England

A letter from our collegue, Deepak Ingole, from England ...

Hello Friends,

I am Deepak Ingole, PhD student at Institute of Information Engineering, Automation, and Mathematics, FCFT, STU in Bratislava. I have started my PhD in October 2014 under EU’s Marie Curie Initial Training Networks (ITN) project – Training in Embedded Predictive Control and Optimization (TEMPO). My PhD thesis topic is Real-time Implementation of Model Predictive Control on PLC. As a part of my PhD and TEMPO project, I am on my research visit to the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. In this blog, I would like to share my research visit experiences so far.

In the Department of Engineering Science, I visited the Control Research Group. Control engineering is a long established field of research at the University of Oxford, with current and previous areas of interest including self-tuning, adaptive and predictive control, sensor and meter validation, fault diagnosis, fuzzy control, and the design and implementation of feedback control systems for regulating novel distributed parameter processes. More recently, the scope of the group's interests has extended to systems and synthetic biology and large-scale networked systems, multi-agent systems and polynomial optimization. In the department, there are students from all over the world working together on different topics which make you versatile and social.

Here, I am working with Prof. Paul Goulart and his students on first order optimization methods used in Model Predictive Control. To be specific, we are working on Alternating Directive Method of Multiplier (ADMM) to improve its speed and complexity. My task is to develop universal number (unum) based ADMM algorithm to investigate speed and resource improvement.

Life in the Oxford:
Oxford is a youthful and cosmopolitan city with plenty to see and do. There are dozens of historic and iconic buildings, including the Bodleian Libraries, Ashmolean Museum, Sheldonian Theatre, the cathedral and the colleges. In the city center, you will find lots of shops, cafés, restaurants, theaters, cinemas, pubs and clubs. There are plenty of green spaces too: riverside walks, England’s oldest botanic garden, the University Parks and college gardens.