Engineering Science

Professor Antonis Papachristodolou joined the University of Oxford in 2006. Since 2015, he has been an EPSRC Fellow and Director of the EPSRC & BBSRC Centre for Doctoral training in Synthetic Biology. He obtained an MA/MEng degree in Electrical and Information Sciences from the University of Cambridge, U.K.

In 2005 he completed a PhD in Control and Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology, with a PhD Minor in Aeronautics. In 2015 he was awarded the European Control Award for his contributions to robustness analysis and applications to networked control systems and systems biology and the O. Hugo Schuck Best Paper Award. He is Fellow of the IEEE. He serves regularly on Technical Programme Committees for conferences, and was associate editor for Automatica and IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.

Antonis is part of the SYSOS (System of Systems) group at the Department of Engineering Science. The SYSOS Group develops tools and algorithms based on modern control theory for the robust analysis and design of biological and technological systems and applies them in a range of areas, from Synthetic Biology to fluid mechanics. In particular, they have been developing theory to understand how nonlinear networked systems operate and how to design control laws for them, using computational tools based on the Sum of Squares decomposition and Semidefinite Programming.

They have been applying this theory to understand and (re)design biological systems (Systems and Synthetic Biology) but also to analyse and design control laws for fluid flows, robust synchronization, multi-agent system consensus, smart power networks and congestion control for the Internet.

View all publications on the Department of Engineering Science website

Wouter Mostert earned his PhD at the University of Queensland in 2015, on the topic of hydrodynamic stability of magnetohydrodynamic implosions, with application to inertial fusion energy, and in the propagation of shock waves. As a postdoc, he continued in this work at Caltech, before moving to study breaking ocean waves at Princeton University. He continued with this research as an Assistant Professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, before joining Oxford in the Environmental Fluid Mechanics group.

Wouter Mostert has interests in fluid mechanics, namely in air-sea interaction and flux of mass, momentum and energy primarily due to wave breaking, along with the associated dynamics of bubbles and droplets, which play a large role in these kinds of problems. He is further interested in the effects of ocean wave systems on sediment and pollutant transport, along with better understanding wave loadings on civil infrastructure.

His current interests are in understanding energy, bubble and droplet statistics in plunging breakers; in wind-driven spume generation processes in ocean waves; in the dissipative properties of shallow-water breakers and coastal wave systems; and the combined effects of wind, waves and storm surge on coastal infrastructure.

View all publications on Department of Engineering Science website

I received the Diploma in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Patras, Greece, in 2008 and the Ph.D. in automatic control from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in November 2012, under the supervision of Prof. John Lygeros.

From December 2012 till December 2013 I was a post-doctoral researcher at ETH Zurich working with Prof. John Lygeros, while from January 2014 till January 2015 I was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at UC Berkeley, working with Prof. Shmuel Oren. From February 2015 till February 2016 I was a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, at Politecnico di Milano, working with Prof. Maria Prandini.

In March 2016, I joined the Control Group, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, where I am currently an Associate Professor. I am also a Fellow in AI & Machine Learning at Reuben College, and a Lecturer at Worcester College.

Since 2020 I am an Associate Editor for Automatica. Since 2016 I am an Associate Editor, Conference Editorial Board: IEEE CSS, EUCA and IFAC. In 2019, 2020 and 2021 I received a Teaching Excellence Award, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford (upon nomination of undergraduate students). In 2013 I received the ETH Medal for my PhD thesis.

View all publications on the Department of Engineering Science website

I graduated from the University of Oxford in 2021, obtaining an MEng in Engineering Science with a focus on information and control. In my final year project I investigated distributed charging of electric vehicles with considerations for uncertainty in supply. I am currently working towards a DPhil in Engineering Science as part of the Autonomous Intelligent Machines and Systems CDT at the University of Oxford under the joint supervision of Prof. Kostas Margellos and Prof. Alessandro Abate.

DPhil project: Data-driven Robust Verification and Control

Ensuring safe operation of dynamical systems is an important challenge for the modern world. A key part of this challenge involves designing methods for the control of systems, so that they meet safety specifications without being overly conservative.
We consider tackling this challenge through data-driven techniques. These techniques allow us to design controllers which are robust to uncertainty based only on samples of that uncertainty, without assuming to know anything further about this uncertainty.

I read for an MEng in Engineering, Economics and Management at Balliol College, Oxford, graduating in 2006 with a first-class degree having been awarded the Edgell Sheppee prize, Lubbock prize and Lubbock scholarship. I subsequently remained at Balliol for my DPhil, where I performed research into turbine blade tip cooling in civil aerospace jet engines for Rolls-Royce. Following my doctoral studies, I joined Lotus F1 Team in 2012 as a computational aerodynamicist. During this period, I gained chartership with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Having spent a season and a half in F1, I returned to the Oxford Thermofluids Institute as a post-doctoral researcher at the end of 2013. I am now a Senior Research Associate in the Active Flow Control group, conducting research into technologies supporting future liquid hydrogen-fuelled aircraft for zero-carbon aviation.

I have a strong interest in teaching, and am a Fellow of the HEA and also hold the SEDA-PDF Learning Teaching and Assessing award, which is aligned with descriptor 2 of the UK Professional Standards Framework. I act as a mentor to several early-stage tutors to help them develop their methods and find their own style as they embark on their teaching journey. On the undergraduate Engineering Science course, I teach:

• Papers P1 & A1: Mathematics
• Papers P3 & A3: Structures, Materials and Mechanics
• Papers P4 & A4: Fluid mechanics, Thermodynamics and Heat & Mass Transfer
• Paper B2: Engineering in Society.

I am also a lecturer at Balliol College and Jesus College.

My current research focuses on the development of novel fluidic devices for the control of combustion in hydrogen-fueled, zero emissions clean aviation engines. Additionally, I am also conducting research and development in plasma-actuated, no-moving-parts valves for integration into the secondary air systems of large civil aviation jet engines and ultrasonically activated fluidic switches used for external aerodynamic flow control.