Mechanical and Civil Engineering Seminar

Title: "Modeling and Controlling Nonlinear Dynamics from Data (without Neural Networks)"

Abstract: The notion of data-driven modeling has become practically synonymous with the use of increasingly complex neural network architectures to explore physical systems. This modeling approach promises to learn the system dynamics purely from observed trajectory data, returning an input-output relationship in the form of a convoluted network. This is to be contrasted with the conventional approach of applied science that seeks to understand the governing principles and derive a compact, interpretable representation of the core system behavior. Each approach claims benefits over the other, but systematic and fair in-situ comparisons on physical systems are rare. In this talk, I discuss how data-driven modeling and control based on contemporary nonlinear dynamical systems methods compare with contemporary neural network-based methods in structural dynamics and soft robotics.

Bio: George Haller is a professor of Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics at ETH Zürich, where he holds the Chair in Nonlinear Dynamics and heads the Institute for Mechanical Systems. His prior appointments include tenured faculty positions at Brown, McGill, and MIT. He also served as the inaugural director of Morgan Stanley's Fixed Income Modelling Center. Professor Haller is a recipient of a Sloan Fellowship in mathematics, the ASME Thomas Hughes Young Investigator Award, a School of Engineering Distinguished Professorship (McGill), the Stanley Corrsin Award of the APS and the Lyapunov Award of the ASME. He is an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, member of the Academia Europaea, and elected fellow of SIAM, APS and ASME. He serves as feature editor at Nonlinear Dynamics and senior editor at the Journal of Nonlinear Science. His research focuses on nonlinear dynamical systems with applications to mechanical vibrations, coherent structures in turbulence, and data- and equation-driven model reduction for physical systems. He has authored three monographs in these areas.