EUNICE offers students a wide range of customised education opportunities, including various summer schools. One of them Blended Intensive Programme on “Optimal Control” took place at the BTU in June.
From 5 to 16 June 2023, an international Summer School on the topic of “Optimal Control” took place at Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU). The Institute of Mathematics at the BTU welcomed a total of 49 students from 9 European and 6 African partner universities.
The collaborative teaching concept of the summer school was jointly developed and implemented with professors from the EUNICE Alliance. In addition to BTU professors Gerd Wachsmuth, Ralf Wunderlich and Carsten Hartmann, professors from the partner universities Serge Nicaise (Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, France), Eduardo Casas (University of Cantabria, Spain), Tommi Sottinen (University of Vaasa, Finland) and Giovanni Nastas (University of Catania, Italy) accompanied the modules during the two-week physical phase in Cottbus.
The summer school was also the first ERASMUS+ Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) to be held at BTU. The new mobility format funded by the ERASMUS+ programme enables a combination of a short physical phase with a virtual phase. The virtual preparation phase already started in May, in which all participating students were taught the basics for the upcoming presence phase. In the parallel modules “Optimal Control of PDEs” and “Stochastic Optimal Control”, the two weeks in Cottbus were used to intensively deepen the teaching content and for further discussions. With successful participation in the summer school and a final examination, the students can acquire a total of 6 credits per module and have them recognised at their home universities.
During an excursion to the Spreewald, the participants had the opportunity to network further, exchange experiences and also playfully solve problems of optimal control [under uncertainty].
Impressions of the physical phase:
“The EUNICE summer school provided an enriching experience that enhanced my knowledge, expanded my perspectives, and equipped me with valuable tools for my academic and professional growth.”
– Kevine Meugang Toukam (Student at AIMS Cameroon)
“I would like to thank the Eunice Summer School and the Brandenburg Technical University for my participation in this program. This summer school was an opportunity for me to meet and discuss with people working in the optimization field. I have been exposed to the fundamentals of optimal control with PDEs (in the theoretical sense) which I found useful for advanced problems. I also had the opportunity to talk about my work with some academic elders and I really appreciated getting their opinions as well as their suggestions to improve some aspects of the work.”
– Audrey Demafo (Student at AIMS Rwanda)
“I appreciated the broad range of topics covered by the school: analysis, numerical analysis, deterministic and stochastics control theory. The diversity of the audience also helps for possible collaborations in the future.”
– Prof. Serge Nicaise (Professor at UPHF)
Interview with Agata Secha (Poznan University of Technology):
