Gioele Zardini (Engineering Trade-offs and Co-design)

In this episode I got to speak with the fantastic Gioele Zardini about his work on the co-design framework, a fascinating framework used to optimise large interconnected systems. We cover the theoretical background of this, intuition behind it, and a ton of different applications where it’s useful, as well as discussing exciting open questions in the field!

Find the transcript at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XPZr9jP4Lphskkw-SiM8h-x1kp7LROqZ243S6zA7EsY/edit?usp=sharing

Follow the podcast on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coffee-and-control-podcast/

Or connect with me directly: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-hodgins-733a30175/

References

Gioele Zardini: https://zardini.mit.edu/

PhD thesis: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/entities/publication/d7c08dd5-bf96-4c1f-a744-5e751f0f44a5

PhDs in control interview: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10555200

Emilio Frazzoli: https://idsc.ethz.ch/research-frazzoli/people/person-detail.frazzoli.html

Andrea Cenci: https://nccr-automation.ch/about/people/andrea-censi

Marco Pavone: https://profiles.stanford.edu/marco-pavone

NuTonomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuTonomy(current site: https://motional.com/)

Brad Nelson: https://msrl.ethz.ch/the-lab/team/Brad_Nelson.html

David Sacramuza: https://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/people_scaramuzza.html

Yujun Huang: https://zardini.mit.edu/people/yujun-huang/

Uncertainty in co-design paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.02766

Background refs on category theory:

David Spivak: https://dspivak.net/
Brendan Fong: http://brendanfong.com/

Gioele's work in progress book: https://storage.zuper.ai/sync/ACT4E/ACT4E/alphubel-prod/build/last/build-public/ACT4E-public.pdf

YouTube talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmAz6fEPa2o

Gioele's course: https://zardini.mit.edu/act4ed/

MIT applied category theory course: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-s097-applied-category-theory-january-iap-2019/

Seven sketches in compositionality: http://brendanfong.com/fong_spivak_an_invitation.pdf

LQG control co-design paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9654960

LQG background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4_hFazBGxU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_RDCFOlJx4

Aaron Ames: http://ames.caltech.edu/

Nikolai Matni: https://nikolaimatni.github.io/

John Doyle: https://www.eas.caltech.edu/people/doyle
CDC episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3ZUcm3gVHKILDEyDjQtXvx

Braess’s paradox: https://resources.mpi-inf.mpg.de/departments/d1/teaching/ws12/ct/Braess-paradox.pdf

Co-design of mobility-on-demand systems: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2003.04739

Formula One co-design papers: https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/entities/publication/bd65f78e-f19a-4469-a379-d4b219893a33 https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/JQmudB

Co-design of soft robotics: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.03761

Cosimo Della Santina inControl episode: https://CoffeeControlLinks.short.gy/LPNORz

Games with partially-ordered objectives: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.07099

Mingjia He: https://mingjia-he.github.io/

Paper on hierarchical games: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12059

Game theory episode: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2xrwua7U2HfSW3sxY6BnRU

Jeff Shamma inControl episode: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/18482182-ep40-jeff-shamma-gain-scheduling-nonlinear-control-learning-dissipativity-in-games-jiu-jitsu

Vincent Abbott: https://zardini.mit.edu/people/vincent-abbott/

Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli: https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Faculty/Homepages/sangiovanni-vicentelli.html

InControl episodes: https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/14692449-ep21-alberto-sangiovanni-vincentelli-part-i-classics-eda-logic-synthesis-spice-intel-x386-cadence-synopsis-platform-based-design

https://www.incontrolpodcast.com/1632769/episodes/14882529-ep22-alberto-sangiovanni-vincentelli-part-ii-cyberphysical-and-hybrid-systems-contracts-chiplets-models-of-computation-time-innovative-ecosystems-biobricks-neuromorphics

John Doyle: https://www.eas.caltech.edu/people/doyle

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(23)

Journal Clubs (Creating reading groups that people want to be part of)

In this episode I talk to three lovely researchers all about journal clubs (AKA reading groups) – what they are, why you might want to be part of one, and how to start your own! I also give some insig...

1 Touko 34min

Brian Douglas (Control Engineering in Industry)

In this episode I got the opportunity to sit down with the fantastic Brian Douglas and talk about what it's like to be a control engineer in industry, common misconceptions he had, and advice for curr...

1 Huhti 58min

Barbara Franci (Game Theory and Resource Allocation)

In this episode I have a lovely conversation with Dr Barbara Franci about her research into game theory, exploring both theoretical concepts (such as variational inequalities, forwards-backwards algor...

1 Helmi 54min

Meet the Faculty Candidates (Fascinating research from the CDC poster session)

In this bonus episode I explore the work of ten fascinating researchers that I met at the Meet the Faculty Candidates poster session at CDC last month. We cover a wide array of different areas, includ...

9 Tammi 25min

CDC special (Conference of Decision and Control 2025)

In this episode I bring my microphones with me to the conference of decision and control (CDC) where I talk to a load of interesting researchers about their recent work. Featuring discussion of a wide...

1 Tammi 51min

IEEE NextCom (Fostering Community Within Controls Research)

In this episode I talk to some wonderful members of IEEEcontrol systems society (CSS) NextCom committee about their work fostering inclusivity and belonging within CSS, as well as empowering the next ...

27 Joulu 202518min

Sophie Schirmer (Quantum Control 2: Controllability and Robustness)

This month I got to interview Sophie Schirmer about herfascinating work on quantum control, including notions such as controllability and realisability, different types of quantum states (including pu...

1 Joulu 202557min