Women in Control: New Trends in Infinite Dimensions (17w5123)

The Banff International Research Station will host the "Women in Control: New Trends in Infinite Dimensions " workshop from July 16th to July 21st, 2017.

Control theory deals, roughly speaking, with the problem of driving a system to a desired behaviour, using accessible measurements. It has had, and continues to have, a significant impact on modern technology. There is a tradition of strong research in control theory in Canada. The recent book ``Twenty-Five Seminal papers in Control theory'' has six papers authored or co-authored by Canadians. While the implementation of controllers is typically carried out by engineers, a vibrant mathematical theory underpins those endeavours. Control of partial differential and delay differential equations has attracted increasing interest in recent years due to a combination of theoretical foundation and computational resources. While the state for systems modelled by ordinary differential equations lies in a ``finite-dimensional space", that for systems modelled by partial differential equations and delay differential equations lies in an ``infinite-dimensional space". This leads to many theoretical and computational complexites. Although the general field of partial differential equations dates back several centuries, control of infinite-dimensional systems dates back only to the French school of Lions in the 1960's.

Control theory - as a discipline- has markedly visible gender gap. This is partially due to the fact that in the past the control area was associated with engineering which has been dominated by male participation. In fact, a wide gender gap has persisted over the years at all levels of STEM disciplines, with control area being particularly affected. Thus, traditionally, control theory has been male ``controlled" discipline -in contrast to social sciences where there is already a significant presence of female researchers. Hopefully, the meeting will encourage younger women to stay in academia, and moreover, provide them with guidance and mentoring. Another aim that we hope to accomplish at this workshop is to establish working collaborations between the attendees, many of whom will have never previously met each other.

The Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) is a collaborative Canada-US-Mexico venture that provides
an environment for creative interaction as well as the exchange of ideas, knowledge, and methods within the Mathematical Sciences, with related disc
iplines and with industry. The research station is located at The Banff Centre in Alberta and is supported by Canada's Natural Science and Engineeri
ng Research Council (NSERC), the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Alberta's Advanced Education and Technology, and Mexico's Consejo Nacional
de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT).