Mathias Hudoba de Badyn







About me

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.





News and Updates

  • July 1, 2024: My paper on feedback equilibrium seeking with Giuseppe Belgioioso and Dominic Liao-McPherson (and others) was published in the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control! Check out the paper here!
  • June 25, 2024: I gave a presentation on distributed control for smart buildings and smart cities at the Exploring cyber-physical-human systems through Living laboratories workshop at the 2024 European Control Conference
  • May 29, 2024: I gave a presentation on distributed MPC to Philipp Heer's group at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa)
  • Dec 21, 2023: I'm hiring up to three postdocs to work on satellite re-orientation using optimal control, or satellite instrumentation. Check out the job posting here!
  • March 15, 2023: My paper on data-driven MPC for building automation with battery degradation with Varsha Behrunani, Marta Zagorowska, and Francesco Ricca was accepted to the 2023 CISBAT conference! Stay tuned for the preprint!
  • March 10, 2023: My paper on distributed MPC with bounded iterations with Giuseppe Belgioioso, Dominic Liao-McPherson, and Nicolas Pelzmann was accepted to the 2023 Ifac World Congress! Check out the preprint here!
  • Oct. 24, 2022: Check out our preprint on feedback equilibrium seeking here!
  • July 15, 2022: My paper on self-tuning networks with Tyler Summers and Iman Shames was accepted to the 2023 CDC. Stay tuned for the preprint!
  • June 15, 2022: Congratulations to my students Nicolas Pelzman and Nivethan Yogarajah for winning the ETH Medal and Willi Studer prize, respectively!
  • Feb. 1, 2022: Our paper on feedback optimization for robotic swarm coordination was accepted to the American Control Conference. Check out the preprint here!
  • Jan. 14, 2022: I'm offering a master's thesis project on game theory for smart homes. Check out the posting here!
  • Jan. 5, 2022: I'm offering a master's thesis on optimization strategies for trading stock options and other financial derivatives. Check out the posting here!
  • Jan. 4, 2022: Our paper on machine learning methods for smart buildings was accepted to Applied Energy. Check out the preprint here!

Selected Publications

Below are some selected publications; see here for a full list.