47th Edition

SoCal Control
Workshop

Host California Institute of Technology

Venue Beckman Institute Auditorium, Pasadena CA

Date Friday, April 24, 2026

About

Overview

The Southern California Control Workshop provides a forum for graduate students and postdocs in systems and control to present their work and connect with fellow researchers and faculty from across the region.

The 47th workshop is hosted at Caltech in the Beckman Institute Auditorium.

Date Friday, April 24, 2026

Venue Beckman Institute Auditorium — Caltech, Pasadena CA 91125

Organizers Eric Mazumdar, Aaron Ames, Soon-Jo Chung

Sponsors Caltech CAST & Caltech IST

The workshop brings together researchers from institutions across Southern California, including Caltech, USC, UCLA, UCSB, UCSD, UCI, UCR, and others.

Supported By

47th SoCal Control Workshop

Technical
Program

Schedule

Program

Time	Speaker	Talk
9:00 – 9:20 am	Breakfast
9:20 – 9:30 am	Welcome
Session 1Learning for Nonlinear Dynamics & Robotics Chair: Yashaswini Murthy (Caltech)
9:30 – 9:50 am	Zachary Olkin Caltech Advisor: Prof. Aaron Ames	CLF-RL: Control Lyapunov Function Guided Reinforcement Learning for Stable Humanoid Locomotion
9:50 – 10:10 am	Zhuochen Liu USC Advisor: Prof. Rahul Jain	Comparing Model-Free Neural State Estimators with Classical Filters in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems
10:10 – 10:30 am	Eiji Nakamura UCLA Advisor: Prof. Elisa Franco	Temporal Signal Processing in Biological Networks: Temporal Dose Inversion by Adaptive Circuits
10:30 – 10:50 am	Xu Shang UC San Diego Advisor: Prof. Yang Zheng	On the existence of Koopman linear embeddings for controlled nonlinear systems
10:50 – 11:20 am	Coffee Break
Session 2Distributed Systems, Games & Multi-Agent Control Chair: Shahriar Talebi (UCLA)
11:20 – 11:40 am	Andy Zhao USC Advisor: Prof. Rahul Jain	Bayesian Learning in Episodic Zero-Sum Games
11:40 am – 12:00 pm	Nicolas Lanzetti Caltech Advisors: Prof. Eric Mazumdar, Prof. Adam Wierman	Strategically Robust Dynamic Games
12:00 – 12:20 pm	David Martin UC Irvine Advisor: Prof. Pramod Khargonekar	Collaborative Task Allocation for Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Systems Through Iterative Clustering
12:20 – 12:40 pm	Aya Hamed UC Santa Barbara Advisor: Prof. Jason Marden	Distributed Learning Dynamics for Coalitional Games
12:40 – 2:00 pm	Lunch & Lab Tours
Session 3Optimization, PDEs & Formal Control Theory Chair: Jason Choi (UCLA)
2:00 – 2:20 pm	Joudi Hajar Caltech Advisor: Prof. Babak Hassibi	Classical Control with Nonquadratic Convex Costs
2:20 – 2:40 pm	Eranda Somathilake UC San Diego Advisor: Prof. Mamadou Diagne	Concurrent Design of DeepONet-Based Event-Triggered and Gain-Scheduled Control for 2×2 Coupled Hyperbolic PDEs
2:40 – 3:00 pm	Reza Rostami UC Irvine Advisor: Prof. Solmaz Kia	Scalar federated learning for linear quadratic regulator
3:00 – 3:20 pm	Spencer Hutchinson UC Santa Barbara Advisor: Prof. Mahnoosh Alizadeh	An SDP-based Approach for the Safe Learning Control of Constrained Linear Quadratic Systems
3:20 – 3:40 pm	Ralph Sabbagh UC Irvine Advisor: Prof. Tryphon Georgiou	Can you steer with the modes of a drum?
3:40 – 4:00 pm	Coffee Break
Session 4Neural Networks in Control & Stability Chair: Nicolas Lanzetti (Caltech)
4:00 – 4:20 pm	Anand Gokhale UC Santa Barbara Advisor: Prof. Francesco Bullo	Contractivity and a Separation Principle for Neural Networks in Control
4:20 – 4:40 pm	Luke Bhan UC San Diego Advisors: Prof. Yuanyuan Shi, Prof. Miroslav Krstic	Neural Operators for Control of Nonlinear Delay Systems: Adaptive and Sampled Measurement Designs
4:40 – 5:00 pm	Amireza Neshaei Moghaddam UCLA Advisors: Prof. Bahman Gharesifard, Prof. Paulo Tabuada	Structural Averaged Controllability of Linear Ensemble Systems
5:20 – 5:40 pm	Ibrahim Kurban Ozaslan USC Advisor: Prof. Mihailo Jovanovic	Automated algorithm design via Nevanlinna–Pick interpolation
5:20 – 5:40 pm	Mahdi Taheri Caltech Advisors: Prof. Soon-Jo Chung, Prof. Fred Y. Hadaegh	Resilient Autonomy
5:20 pm	Concluding Remarks & Happy Hour

Since 2000

Workshop
History

History

All Editions

The first workshop was organized in 2000 at UCSB by Miroslav Krstic, Richard Murray, and Andy Teel. It is now in its 47th edition.

1Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCSB, November 2000
2Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCSD, June 2001
3Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCLA, October 2001
4Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCSB, May 2002
5Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, Caltech, November 2002
6Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCSD, May 2003
7Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, USC, October 2003
8Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCSB, May 2004
9Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCLA, November 2004
10Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCSD, May 2005
11Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, Caltech, November 2005
12Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCSB, May 2006
13Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCR, November 2006
14Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCLA, June 2007
15Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, USC, January 2008
16Southern California Nonlinear Control Workshop, UCSD, November 2008
17Southern California Control Workshop, Caltech, May 2009
18Southern California Control Workshop, UCI, November 2009
19Southern California Control Workshop, UCSB, October 2010
20Southern California Control Workshop, UCR, May 2011
21Southern California Control Workshop, UCLA, October 2011
22Southern California Control Workshop, USC, May 2012
23Southern California Control Workshop, UCSD, November 2012
24Southern California Control Workshop, Caltech, May 2013
25Southern California Control Workshop, UCI, October 2013
26Southern California Control Workshop, UCSB, April 2014
27Southern California Control Workshop, UCR, November 2014
28Southern California Control Workshop, UCLA, May 2015
29Southern California Control Workshop, USC, November 2015
30Southern California Control Workshop, UCSD, June 2016
31Southern California Control Workshop, UCI, October 2016
32Southern California Control Workshop, Caltech, April 2017
33Southern California Control Workshop, UCSB, October 2017
34Southern California Control Workshop, UCR, May 2018
35Southern California Control Workshop, UCLA, November 2018
36Southern California Control Workshop, USC, May 2019
37Southern California Control Workshop, UCSD, January 2020
38Southern California Control Workshop, UCI (virtual), October 2021
39Southern California Control Workshop, UCI, April 2022
40Southern California Control Workshop, Caltech, October 2022
41Southern California Control Workshop, UCSB, April 2023
42Southern California Control Workshop, UCR, November 2023
43Southern California Control Workshop, UCLA, April 2024
44Southern California Control Workshop, USC, November 2024
45Southern California Control Workshop, UCSD, April 2025
46Southern California Control Workshop, UCI, October 2025
47Southern California Control Workshop, Caltech, April 2026

Caltech Campus · Pasadena, CA

Venue, Parking
& Directions

Location

Venue

The workshop takes place at the Beckman Institute Auditorium in the Beckman Institute Building on the Caltech campus, set back on the Beckman lawn off S. Wilson Ave. Note: this is the Beckman Institute, not Beckman Auditorium — they are separate buildings.

Building Beckman Institute Auditorium, Beckman Institute Building

Address 400 S. Wilson Ave, Pasadena, CA 91125

Campus Map caltech.edu/map/campus ↗

Parking

Visitor Parking

Permits required Mon–Fri, 7 am–5 pm. Purchase at automated pay stations in each structure; valid in any unmarked (commuter) stall.

North Wilson Structure #1 Closest

341 S. Wilson Ave
Exit onto Wilson Ave and walk south — Beckman Institute is on your right on the Beckman lawn.

Holliston Structure #4

370 S. Holliston Ave
Walk north on Holliston, right on Del Mar, then left on Wilson Ave south to Beckman Institute.

California Structure #3

1248 E. California Blvd
South edge of campus; only structure with elevator.

Tournament Lot #6

1248 California Blvd
Open surface lot adjacent to California Structure.

Valid in unmarked stalls only. See Caltech Visitor Parking ↗ for full regulations.

Directions

Getting Here

Enter 341 S. Wilson Ave, Pasadena, CA 91125 (North Wilson Parking Structure) into your navigation app. From the structure, walk south along Wilson Ave — the Beckman Institute building is on your right, set back on the Beckman lawn. Do not navigate to "Beckman Auditorium," which is a separate building on the other side of campus.

From LAX

Head east on Century Blvd to I-405 N.
Take I-405 N to I-10 E (Santa Monica Fwy).
Take I-10 E to CA-110 N (Pasadena Fwy); follow until it ends at Arroyo Pkwy.
Continue north on Arroyo Pkwy; turn right (east) on Del Mar Blvd.
Go ~1 mile; turn left (north) on S. Wilson Ave.
The North Wilson Parking Structure (341 S. Wilson Ave) will be on your right.

From the 210 (Foothill Fwy)

Exit at Hill Avenue; head south.
Turn right (west) on Del Mar Blvd.
Turn right (north) on S. Wilson Ave.
The North Wilson Parking Structure will be on your right.

From the 134 (Ventura Fwy)

Take CA-134 E to I-210 E and exit at Hill Avenue.
Follow the 210 directions above.

Walk: North Wilson Structure → Beckman Institute

Exit the structure and head south on S. Wilson Ave.
The Beckman Institute building is on your right (west side of Wilson Ave), set back on the Beckman lawn.
Enter the building and follow signs to the Beckman Institute Auditorium.

By Metro

The Metro A Line stops at Lake Station, a 25–30 min walk from campus. See metro.net ↗.

SoCal ControlWorkshop