Florian Dörfler, Prof. Dr.

Automatic Control Laboratory (IfA) Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITET) Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich Center affiliations: NCCR Automation, AIC, ESC, CLS Contact Office:       ETL I 26 Phone:      +41 44 632 1211 Email:      Address:   Physikstrasse 3, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland Page:        Official ETH Zürich profile Orcid:       0000-0002-9649-5305

I am an Associate Professor at the Automatic Control Laboratory at ETH Zürich and Deputy Head of the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering. I am privileged to work with an outstanding research group.

For the non-scientific audience: if you want to learn more about myself and my discipline, then take a look at this interview. For all the experts, feel free to explore slides, papers, courses, and collaborations linked from this page.

News & Updates

• 2021: exciting adventures on the administrative/executive side of academia co-leading ETH's ITET department

• 2020: Adrian Hauswirth has received the CDC Best Student Paper and Outstanding Student Paper Awards. Congrats!

• 2020: Saverio and I will be teaching an EECI course virtually at KTH (28/9-2/10); see this website. Sign up here.

• 2020: I am honored to receive the EUCA European Control Award

• 2020: I am honored to receive the IFAC Manfred Thoma medal

• 2020: Ali Tayyebi has received the PES GM Best Paper Award. Congrats!

• 2019: We were awarded an NCCR speerheaded by my colleague John. More to come…

• 2019: Congratulations and good luck to Marcello and Dominic who will soon start their tenure track professorships overseas.

Please also check out also the institute news website for further updates, announcements, and events.

Research

My general research interests are centered around distributed control and optimization in complex, cyber-physical, and networked systems with applications to smart power grids, robotic coordination, and social networks.

Topics of recent interest include

• stability and control in low-inertia power grids,

• feedback control via online optimization, and

• distributed and plug-and-play control and optimization,

all with with applications to power systems operation. Furthermore, I work on

• data-driven control,

• social network dynamics and formation,

• algebraic graph theory, and

• dynamics in complex networks.

An updated list of publications, preprints, and technical reports can be found here or on Google Scholar. As usual, the recent-most unpublished results are the most exciting. Take a look at these preprints:

• Distributionally Robust Chance Constrained Data-Enabled Predictive Control

• Game theoretical inference of human behavior in social networks

• Occam's Razor in Opinion Dynamics: The Weighted-Median Influence Process

• Projected Dynamical Systems on Irregular Non-Euclidean Domains for Nonlinear Optimization

• The electronic realization of synchronous machines: model matching, angle tracking and energy shaping techniques

• Global phase and magnitude synchronization of coupled oscillators with application to the control of grid-forming power inverters

• Placement and Implementation of Grid-Forming and Grid-Following Virtual Inertia

Below are some indicative slides and online talks summarizing our work. Take a look here for tutorial slides and here for further research presentations.

Teaching, Projects, Seminars, & Outreach

I am involved in various lecturing, tutoring, and seminar activities; see the left column for a few snippets. If you are interested in bachelor, group, semester, or master projects, then take a look here, see the institute page, or directly contact members of my team who regularly advise such projects.

We regularly host scientific seminars at our institute: see the ETH Control Seminar Series, the institute home page, or sign up for the control news letter, where we also broadcast open positions, projects, job or internship announcements.

My profile on Google Scholar, my full Curriculum Vitae, and a biosketch.