Research

I am largely interested in dynamical problems, e.g., designing (optimization) algorithms and control systems. In particular, I like to understand the interplay between the underlying problem structure and achievable qualitative behaviour.

Selected (pre)prints

Asymptotic stability equals exponential stability—while you twist your eyes Wouter Jongeneel submitted 2024. |pdf| |arXiv| |bibtex| |invex to convex GIF| |South Pole attractor GIF| As presented at the INMA seminar 2024

On topological properties of compact attractors on Hausdorff spaces Wouter Jongeneel European Control Conference (ECC), pp. 186 - 191, 2024. |pdf| |arXiv| |link (IEEE)| |bibtex|

A Large Deviations Perspective on Policy Gradient Algorithms Wouter Jongeneel, Daniel Kuhn and Mengmeng Li (alphabetic) Proceedings of the 6th Annual Learning for Dynamics & Control Conference (L4DC), PMLR vol. 242, pp. 916 - 928, 2024. |arXiv| |link (PMLR)| |bibtex|

Topological Obstructions to Stability and Stabilization: History, Recent Advances and Open Problems Wouter Jongeneel and Emmanuel Moulay SpringerBriefs in Control, Automation and Robotics (Open Access), pp. X, 132, 2023. |pdf| |link (Springer)| |Supported by the SNSF|

On continuation and convex Lyapunov functions Wouter Jongeneel and Roland Schwan IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), vol. 69, no. 10, pp. 6895 - 6906, 2024. |pdf| |arXiv| |link (IEEE)| |bibtex| |Bifurcation GIF|

Imaginary Zeroth-Order Optimization Wouter Jongeneel submitted 2022. |pdf| |arXiv| |bibtex| |PDE GIF| As presented at the International Conference on Continuous Optimization 2022

Small errors in random zeroth-order optimization are imaginary Wouter Jongeneel, Man-Chung Yue and Daniel Kuhn SIAM Journal on Optimization (SIOPT), vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 2638 - 2670, 2024. |pdf| |arXiv| |link (SIAM)| |bibtex| |Lorenz GIF| As presented at the SIAM Conference on Optimization 2021 *Winner of the 2023 INFORMS Optimization Society Student Paper Prize |slides|

Topological Linear System Identification via Moderate Deviations Theory Wouter Jongeneel, Tobias Sutter and Daniel Kuhn IEEE Control Systems Letters, vol. 6, pp. 307-312, 2022. |arXiv| |link (IEEE)| |bibtex| Presented at the 2021 CDC

Efficient Learning of a Linear Dynamical System with Stability Guarantees Wouter Jongeneel, Tobias Sutter and Daniel Kuhn IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (TAC), vol. 68, no. 5, pp. 2790 - 2804, 2023. |arXiv| |link (IEEE)| |bibtex| As presented at the SIAM Conference on Optimization 2023 |slides| *Runner up IEEE CSS Swiss Chapter Young Author Best Journal Paper Award 2023 part of the TAC special issue on Learning and Control.

On Topological Equivalence in Linear Quadratic Optimal Control Wouter Jongeneel and Daniel Kuhn European Control Conference (ECC), pp. 2002 - 2007, 2021. |preprint pdf| |link (IEEE)| |bibtex|

Robust Linear Quadratic Regulator: Exact Tractable Reformulation Wouter Jongeneel, Tyler Summers and Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), pp. 6742 - 6747, 2019. |pdf| |link (IEEE)| |bibtex|

With special thanks to Daniel Kuhn, Mengmeng Li, Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani, Emmanuel Moulay, Roland Schwan, Tyler Summers, Tobias Sutter and Man-Chung Yue.

Throughout, kindly supported by the EU, l'EPFL, the TU Delft, the NCCR Automation, the SNSF and l'UCLouvain.

Selected talks (feel free to request slides or references, I aim to put everything (relevant) online)

• A coarse view on dynamical systems, control and optimization,
  September 2024, UCLouvain, INMA.

• A Large Deviations Perspective on Policy Gradient Algorithms,
  July 2024, University of Konstanz, Department of Computer and Information Science.

• Fika in Paris: on qualitative reasoning in a quantitative age,
  May 2024, KTH Stockholm, Division of Decision and Control Systems (DCS).

• Towards Qualitative System Identification Through Optimization,
  June 2023, SIAM Conference on Optimization, Seattle.

• On continuation and convex Lyapunov functions,
  March 2023, KU Leuven, 17th International Young Researchers Workshop on Geometry, Mechanics, and Control.

• Control theory with Heinz Hopf,
  February 2023, ETH Zürich, Institut für Automatik (IfA).

• Imaginary Zeroth-Order Optimization,
  July 2022, International Conference on Continuous Optimization (ICCOPT), Lehigh.

• Topological obstructions to stability and stabilization,
  March 2022, University of Warsaw, Department of Mathematical Methods in Physics, Theory of Duality seminar.

• Small Errors in Zeroth Order Convex Optimization Are Imaginary,
  July 2021, SIAM Conference on Optimization, online.

• On Topological Equivalence in Linear Quadratic Optimal Control,
  November 2020, Universiteit Utrecht, 15th International Young Researchers Workshop on Geometry, Mechanics, and Control. |video|

• From Correlated Data to Guarantees in Stable Identification,
  October 2020, ETH Zürich, Institut für Automatik (IfA).

Other

Stability via reverse I-projections, a symplectic perspective on the computation
Wouter Jongeneel
technical note, 2022
|pdf|

From Moderate Deviations Theory to Distributionally Robust Optimization: Learning from Correlated Data
Tobias Sutter, Wouter Jongeneel and Daniel Kuhn
|video at SPS|

Thesis

Stability: a search for structure
Wouter Jongeneel
PhD Thesis, Electrical Engineering, EPFL 2024, adviser Daniel Kuhn.
|link|

Controlling the Unknown: A Game Theoretic Perspective
Wouter Jongeneel
MSc Thesis, Systems & Control, TU Delft 2019, adviser Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani.
|pdf| |link| |bibtex|