Synthetic Biology is an emerging field of research whose aim is to endow living cells with new functionalities with applications ranging from healthcare (personalized therapies) to industry and biotechnology (biomaterials, batch fermentation etc).
Our group is focusing on the development of modelling, design and feedback control techniques for synthetic biological applications with particular attention to the exploitation of synthetically engineered microbial consortia. A microbial consortium is made of different cellular populations, each with a different role.
Many dynamical systems that occur naturally in the description of physical processes are piecewise-smooth (PWS). That is, their motion is characterized by periods of smooth evolutions interrupted by instantaneous events, such as impact, switching, sliding and other discrete state transitions. These phenomena arise in any application involving friction, collision, intermittently constrained systems or processes with switching components. For example, in mechanical systems with impacts and friction, power converters with switching elements, gene regulatory networks, and many others.
Discontinuities are also designed intentionally in regulation and stabilization problems, not only as an alternative to classical smooth control but also because many control systems cannot be stabilized by continuous state-dependent feedback. Examples of discontinuous control range from relay control to sliding mode control, from switched control to hybrid control.
We list below some of the specific research topics that are of our interest:
- Analysis of discontinuity-induced bifurcation
- Incremental and differential stability analysis
- Synchronization in networks of PWS systems
- Adaptive control of PWS systems
- Switched control design
- State observer design