I am an associate professor in the Department of Technology Systems (ITS) at the University of Oslo. From 2019-2023, I was a postdoc at the Automatic Control Lab at ETH Zürich working with John Lygeros and Roy Smith. Before working at ETH, I did my PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics at the University of Washington with Mehran Mesbahi on distributed control theory.
I work on problems involving the control and
estimation of networked dynamical systems, with an emphasis on
applications related to sustainability. In particular, using algebraic
graph theory, I study how the structure of the network affects the
performance of distributed control, estimation, and optimization
algorithms. My target domain is the coordination of smart buildings and
energy hubs, and how they can be interconnected with the electric grid
and other utilities to provide services to suppliers, such as
demand-side management and peak shaving. I also work aerospace
applications, focusing on the guidance, navigation, and control of
multi-vehicle systems. These range from swarms of UAVs to distributed
satellite systems.
In my previous life as an undergraduate student at the University of
British Columbia, I worked at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical
Astrophysics under the supervision of James Owen. We studied how X-ray
heating contributes to the dispersal of protoplanetary discs. I also had
the good fortune to work with Richard Marchand and Richard Sydora at
the University of Alberta, where we worked on how to use electrodynamics
space tethers for removing radiation belts around the Earth. In my
final year, I did two Honours theses. I worked with Greg Martin on the
Hilbert-Pólya and pair-correlation conjectures, and with Joanna
Karczmarek’s string theory group studying the geometry of membranes
emerging from the Berenstein-Dzienkowski Hamiltonian.