DCL Student Symposium 2026

Thank you for your interest in the DCL Student Symposium! The Symposium is an annual event which brings together members of the Georgia Tech community working in the area of systems and controls to network and share their research. The Symposium is entirely organized by DCL students, and it is our hope that connections between students working in labs across the Institute will be forged at this event. We look forward to seeing you on Friday, April 24th at the Symposium!

If you would like to attend, please RSVP at this link. More details about the event can be found below.

• Date: Friday, April 24th
• Location: TSRB auditorium (1st floor, right of the entrance)
• Lunch and light refreshments will be provided
• Photos of participants may be taken at the event for official DCL use

Tentative Agenda

Plenary Talk

Speaker: Dr. Francesco Bullo

Website: https://fbullo.github.io/

Abstract

This talk surveys recent advances on contraction theory for dynamical systems, as a robust, computationally-friendly and modular stability theory. Starting from basic notions, I will present novel theoretical properties and examples of contracting dynamics, including gradient systems, controlled Lure’ systems, constrained optimization solvers, and multiplayer games. As first application I will discuss online feedback optimization, where a dynamic plant is interconnected with a controller based on first-order optimization methods. Second, I will discuss the contractivity properties of recurrent neural networks and briefly review applications to unsupervised representation learning, implicit learning models, and reservoir computing.

Biosketch

Francesco Bullo is Distinguished Professor and Mosher Endowed Chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA. He received the Laurea degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy, in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree in Control and Dynamical Systems from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, in 1998. His research interests include contraction theory, network systems, neural networks, and mathematical neuroscience. He is the author or coauthor of Geometric Control of Mechanical Systems (Springer, 2004), Distributed Control of Robotic Networks (Princeton, 2009), Lectures on Network Systems (KDP, v1.7, 2024), and Contraction Theory for Dynamical Systems (KDP, v1.3 2026). He served as IEEE CSS President and SIAG CST Chair. He is a Fellow of ASME, IEEE, IFAC, NetSci, and SIAM.

Student Poster Session

Will include rapid summary talks from each student, along with an interactive poster session. A prize will be awarded for the best poster.

Speaker order:

• Adam Pooley: “Asynchronous Distributed Trajectory Estimation of Multi-Robot Systems”
• Matthew Faw: “Online Control with Multiple Sensors”
• Brendan Gould: “Online Reachable-Set Aware Sampling Based Motion Planning”
• Mukesh Kumar: “Tree search technique for solving multi-agent games on graphs”
• Tanmay Dokania: “Convex reformulation of Optimal Stochastic Control”
• Brandon Ho: “Data-Driven Landmarks Roadmap Generation for Multi-Agent Path Planning”
• Malik Nauman Rauf: “Generalized Euler-Lagrange Jump Conditions for Hybrid Systems”
• Sizhe Wei: “Morphological-Symmetry-Equivariance for Legged Robot Learning and Control”
• Varun Madabushi: “Differentiable Invariant Sets for Hybrid Limit Cycles with Application to Legged Robots.”"
• Neil Janwani: “NaviGait: Navigating Dynamically Feasible Gait Libraries using Deep Reinforcement Learning”

Student Spotlight Talks

More detailed presentations of recent and ongoing student research work.

Session 1:

• Ziwon Yoon: “STATE-NAV: Stability-Aware Traversability Estimation for Bipedal Navigation on Rough Terrain”
• Sizhe Wei: “Morphological-Symmetry-Equivariance for Legged Robot Learning and Control”
• Akash Harapanahalli: “Learning Certified Neural Network Controllers Using Contraction and Interval Analysis”
• Joe Rao: “Generating Differentially Private Networks with a Modified Erdős-Rényi Model”
• Matthew Faw: “Online Control with Multiple Sensors”
• Tanmay Dokania: “Convex reformulation of Optimal Stochastic Control”
• Neil Janwani: “NaviGait: Navigating Dynamically Feasible Gait Libraries using Deep Reinforcement Learning”

Session 2:

• Ehsan Asadollahi: “Risk Domination via Adaptive Scalarization in Vector-Valued Games”
• Italo Napolitano: “Optimal Transport for Time-Varying Multi-Agent Coverage Control”
• Paul Dubrulle: “Actor-Critic MPC for a Miniature Autonomous Blimp”
• Yerin Kim: “Stealthy misdirections for Linear Quadratic Control under Sequential Hypothesis Testing”
• Luke Baird: “Signal Temporal Logic Robustness from Copula Bounds and Interval Random Variables "
• Brandon Ho: “Data-Driven Landmarks Roadmap Generation for Multi-Agent Path Planning”

Faculty Panel

The panel topic is “Building a Resilient Academic Career”, and will roughly focus on

• Learning and adapting to evolving research landscape
• Responding to technological advancements
• Surviving uncertain academic funding

Initial questions will be prepared by the organizers, and students will also be able to submit their own.

The panelists are:

• Plenary speaker Dr. Francesco Bullo
• Dr. Panagiotis Tsiotras
• Dr. Kyriakos Vamvoudakis
• Dr. Yashwanth Nakka