Christian Kallies successfully defended his PhD thesis

Research focused on  an explicit solution approach for optimal control problems.

Christian Kallies, one of our doctoral researchers, successfully defended his PhD thesis on July 28, 2021. His doctorate began in January 2016 and he joined the IMPRS in May 2016. At the IMPRS he was working in the group of Prof. Findeisen at the "Institute for Automation Engineering (IFAT) Laboratory for Systems Theory and Automatic Control".

The title of his PhD thesis is "Approximated Adaptive Explicit Parametric Optimal Control". More concretely Christian Kallies worked on an explicit solution approach for optimal control problems. His research is based on a power series approach,  which was first shown by E. G. Al'brekht. He extended it to non-linear parametric systems and the output feedback case. In particular, the case of variable system parameters, which lead to parametric explicit solutions, is considered. In addition, inequality constraints regarding the control input, system's states, and output values, as well as the regulation without the full state information are examined. In the end, he was able to find proof for the existence of optimal solutions in the form of a power series.

Congratulations!

About his time at the IMPRS, Christian Kallies said that, especially during the first six months, he was able to learn a lot in a very short time frame. Further, he mentioned good access to scientific work. After the first six months he then also faced some challenges. He noticed that the leap from Master's student to doctoral student is much greater than from pupil to student. Overall he commented that there are a lot of lectures  throughout the year, which he liked attending  because they were a great possibility to network.

After his doctorate, he said that he will start a job at the German Aerospace Center in Braunschweig and he further indicated that he might have the opportunity to continue lecturing in Magdeburg. 

We wish you all the best!