Abraham Jan (Arjan) van der Schaft (born 1955) is

emeritus professor ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

of systems and control theory at the Bernoulli Institute of Mathematics Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence,

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; , abbreviated as RUG) is a Public university#Continental Europe, public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen (city), Groningen, Netherlands. Founded in 1614, th ...

. He is notable for his contributions to network modelling and control of complex physical systems, specifically in the areas of Port-Hamiltonian systems, passivity-based control, nonlinear ''H''_∞ control,

hybrid systems A hybrid system is a dynamical system that exhibits both continuous and discrete dynamic behavior – a system that can both ''flow'' (described by a differential equation) and ''jump'' (described by a state machine, automaton, or a differen ...

, and port-thermodynamical systems. He is a Fellow of the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

Career

Arjan van der Schaft received the undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in Mathematics from the

, Netherlands, in 1979 and 1983, respectively. In 1982 he joined the Department of Applied Mathematics,

University of Twente The University of Twente ( ; Abbreviation, abbr. ) is a Public university, public technical university located in Enschede, Netherlands. The university has been placed in the top 170 universities in the world by multiple central ranking tables. ...

, Enschede, where he was appointed as a full professor in Mathematical Systems and Control Theory in 2000. In September 2005 he returned to Groningen as a full professor in Mathematics. As of June 2021, he became emeritus professor at the same university. In 2006 he was an invited speaker at the

International Congress of Mathematicians The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the IMU Abacus Medal (known before ...

in Madrid. Van der Schaft has served as Associate Editor for Systems & Control Letters, Journal of Nonlinear Science, SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, and the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control. Currently he is Associate Editor for the Journal of Geometric Mechanics, and Editor-at-Large for the European Journal of Control.

Books

* System Theoretic Descriptions of Physical Systems (1984) * Variational and Hamiltonian Control Systems (1987, with P.E. Crouch) * Nonlinear Dynamical Control Systems (1990, with H. Nijmeijer) * ''L''₂-Gain and Passivity Techniques in Nonlinear Control (2000) * An Introduction to Hybrid Dynamical Systems (2000, with J.M. Schumacher) * Modeling and Control of Complex Physical Systems: the Port-Hamiltonian Approach (Geoplex Consortium, 2009)

Honors and awards

*Fellow of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

since 2002. *The paper "A.J. van der Schaft, L2-gain analysis of nonlinear systems and nonlinear state feedback H∞ control, TAC. AC-37, pp. 770–784, 1992" was the Dutch research paper in international scientific journals within the Technical Sciences that obtained the largest number of citations during the evaluation period 1994–1998.Nederlands Observatorium voor Wetenschap en Techniek, Wetenschaps- en Technologie-indicatoren Rapport 2000, page 59, Table 3.10. *Invited semi-plenary speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians, Madrid, 22–30 August 2006: From networks models to geometry: a new view on Hamiltonian systems. *SICE Takeda Best Paper Prize 2008 for "An approximation method for the stabilizing solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation for integrable systems", a Hamiltonian perturbation approach', Transactions of the Society of Instrument and Control Engineers (SICE), 43, pp. 572–580, 2007.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schaft, Arjan van der 1955 births Living people Control theorists Dutch electrical engineers Dutch mathematicians University of Groningen alumni Academic staff of the University of Groningen Academic staff of the University of Twente Fellows of the IEEE