5th HYCON2 and EFFINET PhD Schools

The 5th HYCON2 PhD School on Control of Networked and Large-Scale Systems and EFFINET PhD School on Control of Drinking Water Networks took place Monday July 1 to Friday July 5, 2013 at IMT Lucca, Italy.

The school was targeted at graduate students and researchers who want to learn the main concepts of the appealing field of networked control of large-scale systems, as well as at graduate students and postgraduate researchers already working in the area.

The school was attended by 91 participants coming from 12 european and non-european countries. 47 out of 91 participants came from outside Italy.

14 selected speakers lectured during the school covering the basic concepts and results on:

stability and control of networked control systems
wireless communication
event-triggered and self-triggered control
consensus algorithms
decentralized control
distributed optimization
model predictive control
real-time embedded control and scheduling
large-scale applications such as power and water distribution networks.

The school was organised at IMT Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca. Lectures were held in the auditorium of "Complesso San Micheletto", a former medieval monastery built in the VIII century and situated in the hystorical centre of Lucca, within the city walls.

The program of the school included five full days of lectures, interleaved by enough time slots to allow scientific discussions among the participants and with the speakers.

The social event, held on July 3rd, was organized as a buffet banquet settled in the internal courtyard of the "San Micheletto" complex.
The location was highly appreciated by both the students and the lecturers, and many of them enjoyed the opportunity to visit one of the most beautiful towns in Tuscany.

In the morning of Friday, July 5 took also place the "EFFINET PhD School on Control of Drinking Water Networks".

The schools are co-organized within European research activities under the following projects:

European Network of Excellence "HYCON2: HighlY-COmplex and Networked CONtrol systems"
European project "EFFINET - Efficient Integrated Real-time Monitoring and Control of Drinking Water Networks"

The school followed an established successful tradition of organizing biannual international PhD schools. The 1st HYCON PhD School on Hybrid Systems, the 2nd HYCON PhD School on Hybrid Systems, the 3rd WIDE PhD School on Networked Control Systems, and the 4th HYCON2 PhD School on Control of Networked and Large-scale Systems took place in 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2011, respectively. On these four schools, top researchers in the field educated over 450 PhD students from all over the world on a broad range of topics.