Coffee and Control

In this episode I got to speak with the fantastic Gioele Zardini about his work on the co-design framework, a fascinating framework used to optimise large interconnected systems. We cover the theoretical background of this, intuition behind it, and a ton of different applications where it’s useful, as well as discussing exciting open questions in the field!
 
Find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XPZr9jP4Lphskkw-SiM8h-x1kp7LROqZ243S6zA7EsY/edit?usp=sharing
Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/
Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/
 
References
Gioele Zardini: https://zardini.mit.edu/
PhD thesis: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/entities/publication/d7c08dd5-bf96-4c1f-a744-5e751f0f44a5
PhDs in control interview: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10555200
Emilio Frazzoli: https://idsc.ethz.ch/research-frazzoli/people/person-detail.frazzoli.html
Andrea Cenci: https://nccr-automation.ch/about/people/andrea-censi
Marco Pavone: https://profiles.stanford.edu/marco-pavone
NuTonomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuTonomy(current site: https://motional.com/)
Brad Nelson: https://msrl.ethz.ch/the-lab/team/Brad_Nelson.html
David Sacramuza: https://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/people_scaramuzza.html
Yujun Huang: https://zardini.mit.edu/people/yujun-huang/
Uncertainty in co-design paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.02766
 
Background refs on category theory:
David Spivak: https://dspivak.net/
Brendan Fong: http://brendanfong.com/
Gioele's work in progress book: https://storage.zuper.ai/sync/ACT4E/ACT4E/alphubel-prod/build/last/build-public/ACT4E-public.pdf
YouTube talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmAz6fEPa2o
Gioele's course: https://zardini.mit.edu/act4ed/
MIT applied category theory course: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-s097-applied-category-theory-january-iap-2019/
Seven sketches in compositionality: http://brendanfong.com/fong_spivak_an_invitation.pdf
 
LQG control co-design paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9654960
LQG background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4_hFazBGxU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_RDCFOlJx4
Aaron Ames: http://ames.caltech.edu/
Nikolai Matni: https://nikolaimatni.github.io/
John Doyle: https://www.eas.caltech.edu/people/doyle
CDC episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ZUcm3gVHKILDEyDjQtXvx
 
Braess’s paradox: https://resources.mpi-inf.mpg.de/departments/d1/teaching/ws12/ct/Braess-paradox.pdf
 
Co-design of mobility-on-demand systems: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.04739
 
Formula One co-design papers: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/entities/publication/bd65f78e-f19a-4469-a379-d4b219893a33https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/JQmudB
Co-design of soft robotics: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.03761  
Cosimo Della Santina inControl episode: https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/LPNORz
 
Games with partially-ordered objectives: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.07099
Mingjia He: https://mingjia-he.github.io/
Paper on hierarchical games: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12059
Game theory episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2xrwua7U2HfSW3sxY6BnRU
Jeff Shamma inControl episode: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/18482182-ep40-jeff-shamma-gain-scheduling-nonlinear-control-learning-dissipativity-in-games-jiu-jitsu
Vincent Abbott: https://zardini.mit.edu/people/vincent-abbott/
Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli: https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/sangiovanni-vicentelli.html
InControl episodes:  https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/14692449-ep21-alberto-sangiovanni-vincentelli-part-i-classics-eda-logic-synthesis-spice-intel-x386-cadence-synopsis-platform-based-design
https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/14882529-ep22-alberto-sangiovanni-vincentelli-part-ii-cyberphysical-and-hybrid-systems-contracts-chiplets-models-of-computation-time-innovative-ecosystems-biobricks-neuromorphics
John Doyle: https://www.eas.caltech.edu/people/doyle

In this episode I have a lovely conversation with Dr Barbara Franci about her research into game theory, exploring both theoretical concepts (such as variational inequalities, forwards-backwards algorithms, and stochastic Nash equilibrium-seeking problems) and practical applications, including resource allocation, energy management, and generative adversarial networks!
 
You can find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h9AbCPzzlt7ggNOGx3bK3pwSaCUo__LtYzvdJ-5wqYw/edit?usp=sharing
 
Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/
Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/
 
References
Barbara Franci: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/b-franci
PhD thesis: https://tesidottorato.depositolegale.it/bitstream/20.500.14242/198173/1/FRANCI%20Tesi2.pdf
More background on evolutionary games: https://users.ssc.wisc.edu/~whs/teaching/805/handbook.pdf
Jeff Shamma inConctrol episode: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/18482182-ep40-jeff-shamma-gain-scheduling-nonlinear-control-learning-dissipativity-in-games-jiu-jitsu 

Wisdom of a crowd paper: https://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/18M1232267
Francesco Bullo: https://fbullo.github.io/
Original Galton paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/075450a0
 
Video on the Lagrangian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR4ff0dTLTw
Useful lecture notes on these concepts: https://www.mit.edu/~gfarina/notes/
 
Distributed forwards-backwards paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9309063
Extragradient paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/11184508
Relaxed inertial forwards-backwards paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9682905
 
Professor Lacra Pavel: https://www.ece.utoronto.ca/people/pavel-l/
Deterministic decoupling paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330888828_An_operator_splitting_approach_for_distributed_generalized_Nash_equilibria_computation
Pseudo-monotone functions: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225986571_Pseudomonotone_Operators_A_Survey_of_the_Theory_and_Its_Applications
Inertial gradient descent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iudXf5n_3ro&t=60s
 
GANs paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9523601
Original Goodfellow paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2661

Partial information paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005109821006300
Incorporating a bias: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10886508
Nash games with misleading information: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/11008595

Evolutionary dynamics in distributed control: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7823106

In this bonus episode I explore the work of ten fascinating researchers that I met at the Meet the Faculty Candidates poster session at CDC last month. We cover a wide array of different areas, including data-driven methods, fault-tolerant control, biological systems, PDEs, distributed estimation and a whole lot more!
 
Correction: At ~5:20 I mention that Anju was able to characterize the strategies of the two communicating entities at the Nash equilibrium - In actual fact this is a Stackelberg equilibrium (Stackelberg games involve players acting sequentially, taking either a leader or follower role)

You can view the transcript for this episode at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Tf4ORHPI5Thbs-nA9DQTSu87TKbYni9JJN2UXqn5kU/edit?usp=sharing
Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/
Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/
 
Links and references
Amy Strong: https://bridgeman.pratt.duke.edu/people/amy-strong
Paper on data-driven invariance: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.19231
 
Anju Anand: https://sites.google.com/binghamton.edu/anjuanand
Strategic quantisation: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10960399
Incorporating privacy into the objective: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.06321
 
Brian Block: https://mae.osu.edu/people/block.168
Control of PDE traffic flow: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.04823

Declan Jagt: https://search.asu.edu/profile/3729730
Stability analysis of coupled multivariate PDEs: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.14840
Scalar quadratic PDEs: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10384073
PIETOOLS software: https://control.asu.edu/pietools/pietools
Hamza El-Kebir: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamza-el-kebir/
Control authority degradation paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10354437
Sensor and actuator degradation: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=10521243
Electrosurgery paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article/21/210/20230420/90578/Heat-conduction-in-live-tissue-during
Electrostatic signed distance functions: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12554
 
Kirill Sechkar: https://engbio.ox.ac.uk/people/kirill-sechkar
Control of genetic circuits paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.04.01.646303v2.full.pdf
 

Nick Marios Kokolakis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-marios-t-kokolakis-44717b164/
Pre-defined time RL paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005109825003152
 Parth Paritosh: https://pptx.github.io/pparitosh/Estimating a subset of variables: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.01227
Privacy preserving paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/11073227
Radoslaw Patelski: https://www.linkedin.com/in/radoslaw-patelski/?originalSubdomain=pl
Observers for hovercraft: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9874346
ADRC with parameter identification: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10345678
ADRC with adaptive input gain: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019057825001089
 
Carmen Amo Alonso: https://camoalon.github.io/
Research overview: https://camoalon.github.io/research/
Comparing mixer blocks: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.15731
Intro to state space models in deep learning: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.16899
Combining generative AI with control in robotics: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.10762

In this episode I bring my microphones with me to the conference of decision and control (CDC) where I talk to a load of interesting researchers about their recent work. Featuring discussion of a wide range of different topics, including reinforcement learning, control architecture, game theory, AI-human interaction, event-triggered control and a whole lot more!
 
You can view the episode transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h6PdTd9xLTcJOGPx6TIkXOKPz_NGoS9_sA8CUvoZlx8/edit?usp=sharing
 
Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/
Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/
 
CDC web-page: https://cdc2025.ieeecss.org/
Female influencers in control: https://www.control.lth.se/external-engagement/female-influencers-in-automatic-control/
Survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe7VtNHI6bG8UBEoSGiAuVXNsmXSHlw8xG0LuMon2DVd0Pv0A/viewform
inControl episode: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/18361436-ep39-female-influencers-in-control
 
Alessandro Abate: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/alessandro.abate/
Maegan Tucker: https://maegantucker.com/
Joe Moeller: https://joe-moeller.com/
Category theory blog: https://joe-moeller.com/hi/
Rodolphe Sepulchre: https://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/profiles/rs771
inControl episode: https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/9HLW37
Spiking control of a snake: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.02968
Neuromorphic architecture: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.11924
 
Raj Velichete: https://ece.illinois.edu/about/directory/grad-students/rkv4
Vijeth Hebber: https://www.vijethhebbar.com/
John Doyle: https://www.eas.caltech.edu/people/doyle
InControl episodes: https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/yx0IF5https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/qtk0Le
Dimos Dimarogonas: https://people.kth.se/~dimos/
Plenary on formal verification for multi-agent systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C3GSgVmxdo&t=1327s
Attacks on controlling multi-agent systems: https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.soton.idm.oclc.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11036540
ESC inspired by insect flapping: https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.soton.idm.oclc.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11006034
My CDC paper: https://pure.soton.ac.uk/admin/files/315205732/CDC2025_2_.pdf
Jorge Poveda: https://poveda.ucsd.edu/
Victoria Grushkovskaya: https://grushkovska.science/
Higher-order Lie bracket extremum-seeking: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.07092 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.01136
 
Azu Ozdaglar: https://asu.mit.edu/
Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DR37zdEKPw
Matt Turner: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5y5nkg/professor-matthew-turner
Matt Turner episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5KLLOvbCjOkL0v8iXo84vt
Kemin Zhou: https://www.ece.lsu.edu/kemin/
Multiobjective complementary control: https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.soton.idm.oclc.org/document/10767397
 
Yujun Huang: https://zardini.mit.edu/people/yujun-huang/
Tyler Hanks: https://gataslab.org/members/tylerhanks
NextCom: https://sites.google.com/view/css-nextcom
NextCom podcast episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7exZHRwVazI8AaHtiSMmE8
Csaba Szepesvari: https://sites.ualberta.ca/~szepesva/
Friday plenary talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W2IrHyuSjU
Fengyu Yue: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fengyu-yue-8849a6314/?originalSubdomain=il
Pio Ong: https://pioong.github.io/
Jacqueline Scherpen: https://www.rug.nl/staff/j.m.a.scherpen/?lang=en
Bode lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W2IrHyuSjU  (Skip to 4:52:46)
Alberto Padoan episode on model order reduction: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1kwlnlQqtID1naRcyLL12O
Meggie Maschner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meggie-marschner-445634236/?originalSubdomain=de
Brooks Butler: https://sites.google.com/view/brooks-butler
Mauro Salazar: https://www.tue.nl/en/research/researchers/mauro-salazar
Design of smart cities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W2IrHyuSjU  (Skip to 8:32:49)

In this episode I talk to some wonderful members of IEEEcontrol systems society (CSS) NextCom committee about their work fostering inclusivity and belonging within CSS, as well as empowering the next generation of leaders within control. We also cover how you can be a part of this!
 
You can find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/186arBxVLdcpHUCT9djgXQ7IMVvX5SLsMk0LmnzOLbRY/edit?usp=sharing
 
Fill in this leadership interest survey if you’d like to getinvolved:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc-9qK13qYOSylyo-L-s8LvIYjd9bUmWlpd7zj2C7cxDASK-Q/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=113511961640315346198
 
Slack channel: https://join.slack.com/t/next-comworkspace/shared_invite/zt-3kz84ooc6-iLeTIhTKs5oMwJ8ccjTZxw(This link will time-out after a little while – if you find it’s not working you can contract me or one of the other committee members and we can add you directly!)
 
Links and references
NextCom webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/css-nextcom
Brooks Butler: https://sites.google.com/view/brooks-butler
Email: [email protected]
Anastasia Bizyaeva: https://anastasiabzv.github.io/
Email: [email protected]
Phil E Paré: https://sites.google.com/view/philpare
Umar Niazi: https://sites.google.com/view/umarniazi/
Urmee Maitra: https://urmeemaitra.github.io/
Carina Veil: https://profiles.stanford.edu/carina-veil
Pio Ong: https://pioong.github.io/
Leonardo Toso: https://leotoso.github.io/
 
 
ECC episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4PAlFzgSoLM6andaXEWB8e