Great news for our research group: Our team has won this year's Benchmark Challenge at the IFAC World Congress 2026 (Busan, Korea)! As part of an overnight hackathon, several team members joined forces to test, compare, and iteratively refine various control strategies. In the end, we developed an approach that reliably met the complex requirements of the benchmark.
About the Challenge: The task focused on the precise control of dynamic processes in microalgae cultures, with the aim of providing optimal conditions for growth. This topic closely aligns with our research in Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA), where we aim to stabilize and optimize biological growth processes through targeted automation.

Our team member Mr. Schmidt presented his peer-reviewed publications at the European Control Conference 2026, which took place in Reykjavík on July 07th-10th. The papers are titled:

• Time-Varying Optimal Control under Measurement Errors
• Optimizing Control Using Control Lyapunov Functions and Linear Programming

Prof. Dr. Konstantin Hopf (TU Chemnitz) will give a talk on Explanations and Decision Behavior in Algorithmic Decision Support at 11:00 am in 2/W040. Everybody is heartily invited. All past and future seminars can be found here.

Our team sucessfully submitted an article for the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2026 held in South Korea, where approximately only a quarter of the submitted 24000 publications were accepted. The paper is part of the MORE-KIBA junior researcher group and is titled Hierarchical Causal Abduction: A Foundation Framework for Explainable Model Predictive Control. The preprint can be found on arXiv. Additionally, this press release summarizes the results of the article and the related project.

Together with two other professorships at our institute, we established a new master course (taught in English) starting in winter semester 2026/27. All information about Automation, Robotics and Control along with all relevant documents can be found on its official website.

Prof. Dr. Mohanakrishnan Logan (Indian Institute of Technology Madras) will give a talk on Advancing Bioprocess Innovations for Sustainable Bioenergy and Bioproducts at 01:45 pm in 2/W012. Everybody is heartily invited. All past and future seminars can be found here.

Prof. Dr. Philipp Rumschinski (Hochschule Furtwangen) will give a talk on A practical perspective on Koopman operator theory at 01:45 pm in 2/W014. Everybody is heartily invited. All past and future seminars can be found here.

Michel Riechmann & David Hasler (ogmo) will give a talk on Fit for the Future? - A new Approach to Wastewater Management at 03:15 pm online. Everybody is heartily invited. All past and future seminars can be found here.

Prof. Dr. Philipp Rumschinski (Hochschule Furtwangen) will visit our professorship to strengthen our cooperation.