April 25, 2014, Broida 1640

Modeling, simulation, design and control of high performance complex DoD Systems have been placing increasing demands on both computational resources and theoretical and algorithmic development. To meet the challenges in dealing with the underlying high-dimensional, nonlinear, and stochastic problems, new methodologies for control and design are needed. More complex physics is to be included in simulations, more accuracy and efficiency is required of the algorithms, and control and design of complex systems should become efficient computational tasks. While there has been serious research on development of algorithms for control or optimization of these problems (e.g. flow control, vibration control, design of structures), we have yet to satisfy the real-world application requirements in terms of scalability, efficiency and accuracy. In this talk, a brief discussion of DoD needs in computational control theory will be presented and the scientific challenges will be addressed.

Dr. Fariba Fahroo has recently joined DARPA Defense Science Office (DSO) as a Math program manager. Her prior position has been with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research where she was a program officer for Math programs in Dynamics and Control, Computational Mathematics and Optimization and Discrete Math. While at AFOSR, she initiated and managed basic research programs in various areas of computational math and control theory such as multiscale modeling and computation, uncertainty quantification, design under uncertainty, distributed, multi-agent control and estimation and computational control theory.
Prior to her position at AFOSR, she was a professor of Applied Mathematics at the Naval Postgraduate School. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Math from Brown University, a Master of Arts degree in Mathematics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Mathematics and Physics from the University of California, Berkeley.