Events Calendar

Center for Systems and Control (CSC@USC) and Ming Hsieh Institute for Electrical Engineering

Speaker: Ketan Savla, University of Southern California

Talk Title: Capacity of Societal Cyber-Physical Systems

Series: CSC@USC Seminar Series

Abstract: The term capacity has natural connotations about fundamental limits and robustness to disruptions. For engineered systems, a rigorous characterization of capacity also provides insight into algorithms with universal performance guarantees and informs optimal strategic resource allocation. We present analysis and optimization of capacity and related performance metrics for societal cyber-physical systems (including traffic, mobility, and power networks) in canonical settings. At the macroscopic scale, we extend static network flow formulations to several flow dynamics and control settings (including cascading failure). The tractability of the resulting nonlinear analysis and optimization is facilitated by the spatial sparsity of dynamics and invariance of key input-output properties, such as monotonicity, across multiple resolutions in the network. At the microscopic scale, we consider spatial queues with state-dependent service rate; for example, such problems arise in networks of dynamically coupled vehicles. While this dependence is complex in general, we provide tight characterization in limiting cases, for instance large queue length, which leads to tight throughput estimates.

Biography: Ketan Savla is an associate professor (with tenure) and John and Dorothy Shea Early Career Chair in Civil Engineering at the University of Southern California, with joint appointments in the Sonny Astani Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (courtesy), and the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering-Systems (courtesy). Prior to that, he was a research scientist in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at MIT. He obtained his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and M.A. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. His current research interest is in distributed robust and optimal control, dynamical networks, state-dependent queueing systems, and incentive design, with applications in civil infrastructure and autonomous systems. His recognitions include CCDC Best Thesis Award from UCSB, NSF CAREER, an IEEE CSS George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award, and AACC Donald P. Eckman Award. He serves/has served as an Associate Editor for the Conference Editorial Board of the IEEE Control Systems Society, the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, and the IEEE Control Systems Letters.

Host: Mihailo Jovanovic, mihailo@usc.edu

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos