Rijksuniversiteit GroningenUniversity of Groningen

Home page of Ruth F. Curtain

Affiliation
Biography and Research
Ph.D. ceremony of Mark Opmeer, 2006: photos
Farewell lecture, 2006: photos, video and texts
Tony Pritchard 1937--2007
Administration
Publications



Head of page Affiliation

Prof.dr.Ruth F. Curtain

University of Groningen
Department of Mathematics
P.O. Box 800
9700 AV Groningen
(The Netherlands)

IWI - building, room 321
Phone : +31 (0)50 3633985
Fax : +31 (0)50 3633800

Email : r.f.curtain@math.rug.nl



Head of page Biography and Research

Ruth F. Curtain was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1941 and she completed her early academic education (B.Sc. (Hons) 1962, Dip.Ed. 1963, M.A. Mathematics 1965) at the University of Melbourne. In 1966 she moved to the United States to study for a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics at Brown University, Providence, R.I., U.S.A. in 1969, and subsequently as assistant Professor at Purdue University, (1970-1971). The period 1971 to 1977 was spent at the University of Warwick, U.K., first, as a research fellow at the Control Centre and subsequently as lecturer. She joined the mathematics section in Groningen in 1977. Her research interests lie in the area of infinite dimensional systems theory and she has written many research papers and three books, the latest with Hans Zwart: ``An Introduction to Linear Infinite-Dimensional Systems Theory'' (Springer Verlag 1995). She has served as an associate editor for the international journals Systems and Control Letters, Automatica, Mathematics of Control, Signals and Systems and for the Journal of Mathematical Systems, Estimation and Control and as an editor for Automatica. For contributions to the control theory of stochastic systems and infinite-dimensional systems she was elected to the grade of Fellow in the IEEE. More about her current research interests can be found in Reciprocal systems.



Head of page Farewell Lecture

On retirement it is the custom that a professor deliver a farewell address to colleagues, family and friends. The nature of the address is  a personal view of one's professional career at the university and outside. On 12 September professor Curtain delivered her farewell lecture with the title "An Australian looks back on 29 years at the RUG". The lecture is a "sound and sight" presentation in Dutch and accompanied by over 60 slides. Those interested can download a video recording (Curtain.wmr) of the actual lecture in the main university hall. Unfortunately, the colours of the slides are not visible, but these can be seen in the pdf file "afscheid.pdf".  English speakers can follow the lecture using the English translation, "Englishversion.pdf", interspersed with the slide titles and the pdf file of the slides, "afscheid.pdf". Dutch speakers can do this in Dutch using koppentext.pdf and "afscheid.df". The file "afscheidtext.tex" is the plain unadulterated Dutch text.
Photo's of the day can be found at the link.......
  1. Curtain.wmv
  2. afscheid.pdf
  3. Englishversion.pdf
  4. koppentext.pdf
  5. afscheidtext.pdf
  6. Photos

Head of page Administration

Recently the Faculty of Mathematics and the Natural Sciences launched an initiative to increase the number of women in the permanent scientific staff. This was named the Rosalind Franklin Fellowship programme and Professor Curtain co-ordinated this extremely successful project that is documented in English and in Dutch .

In the Netherlands the majority of Research Funding is co-ordinated by the Dutch Science Research Council. They are assisted in policy and funding decisions by various subcommittees representing certain discipline areas. In September 2003 she joined the committee responsible for mathematics, computing science and astronomy.


Head of page Publications

Recent Publications

    Papers Published in International Journals

    1. J.C. Oostveen and R.F. Curtain, Robustly stabilizing controllers for dissipative infinite-dimensional systems with colocated actuators and sensors, Automatica, 36, 2000, 337-348.
    2. J.C. Oostveen, R.F. Curtain and K. Ito, An approximation theory for strongly stablizing solutions to the operator Riccati equation, SIAM J. Control and Optimization, 38, 2000, 1909-1937.
    3. H.L. Logemann and R.F. Curtain, Absolute stability results for well-posed infinite-dimensional systems with applications to low-gain integral control, ESIAM: Control, Optimization and Calculus of variations, 5, 2000, 395-424.
    4. R.F. Curtain and J.C. Oostveen, The Popov criterion for strongly stable distributed parameter systems, International Journal of Control, 74, 2001, 265-280.
    5. A. Sasane and R.F. Curtain, Inertia Theorems for Operator Lyapunov Inequalities, Systems and Control Letters, 43, 2001, 127-132.
    6. A. Sasane and R.F. Curtain, Optimum Hankel Norm Approximation for the Pritchard-Salamon class of infinite-dimensional systems , J. Integral Equations and Operator Theory, 39, 2001, 98-126.
    7. R.F. Curtain and A. Sasane, Compactness and Nuclearity of the Hankel operator and internal stability of infinte-dimensional linear systems, Int. J. Control, 74, 12, 2001, 1260-1270.
    8. R.F. Curtain, Linear operator inequalities for strongly stable weakly regular linear systems, Math. Control Signals and Systems, 14, 2001, 299-337.
    9. A. Sasane and R.F. Curtain, Hankel norm approximation for well-posed linear systems, Systems and Control Letters, 48, 2003, 407-414.
    10. R.F. Curtain, H.L. Logemann and O.J. Staffans, Stability results of Popov-type for well-posed infinite-dimensional systems with application to integral control Proc. London Math.Soc., 86, 2003, 779-816.
    11. R.F. Curtain, Riccati equations for stable regular linear systems: the generic case, SIAM. Journal of Control and Optim., 42, 2003, 1681-1702.
    12. R.F. Curtain, Regular linear systems and their reciprocals: applications to Riccati equations, Systems and Control Letters, 49, 2003, 81-89.
    13. R.F. Curtain, M. Demetriou and K. Ito, Adaptive Compensators for Perturbed Positive Real Infinite Dimensional Systems, Int. J, Applied Math. and Computer Science, 13, No.4. pp. 441-452, 2003.
    14. R.F. Curtain, H.L. Logemann and O.J. Staffans, Absolute stability in infinite dimensions. Proc. Royal Soc. London, 460, 2004, 2171-2196.
    15. M.R. Opmeer and R.F. Curtain, New Riccati equations for well-posed linear systems, Systems and Control Letters, 52, 339-347, 2004.
    16. M.R. Opmeer and R.F. Curtain, LGQ-balancing for discrete-time infinite-dimensional systems. SIAM J. Control and Optimization, 43 pp.1196-1221, 2004.
    17. M. Opmeer and R.F. Curtain, The suboptimal Nehari problem for well-posed infinite-dimensional systems. SIAM J. Control and Optimization, 44 pp.991-1018, 2005.
    18. M. Opmeer and R.F. Curtain, Normalized coprime factorizations of well-posed infinite-dimensional systems, MCSS, to appear.
    19. O. Iftime and R.F Curtain and H.J. Zwart, A classification of the Algebraic Riccati equations for infinite-dimensional systems, Int. J. Control, 72 pp.505--520, 2005.
    20. R.F. Curtain and G. Weiss, Exponential stabilization of well-posed systems by colocated feedback, SIAM, to appear.
    21. R.F. Curtain and G. Weiss, Exponential stabilization of a Rayleigh beam using colocated control, IEEE, to appear.
    22. R.F. Curtain, Robustly stabilizing controllers with respect to left-coprime factor perturbations for infinite-dimensional linear systems, Systems and Control Letters, to appear.
    23. R.F. Curtain, A robust LQG-controller design for DPS, Int. J. Control, to appear.
    Papers Published in Conference Proceedings

    1. R.F. Curtain and H.L. Logemann, A frequency domain criterion for absolute stability of infinite-dimensional systems with applications to low gain control, Proc. MTNS 2000, (CDROM).
    2. A. Sasane and R.F. Curtain, Optimal Hankel Norm Approximation for infinite-dimensional systems, Proc. MTNS 2000, (CDROM).
    3. R.F. Curtain and A. Sasane, Optimum Hankel Norm Approximation for the Pritchard -Salamon class of non-exponentially stable infinite-dimensional systems, Proc. 39 th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Sydney, Australia, p. 4594-4599, 2000.
    4. J.C. Ooostveen and R.F. Curtain and K. Ito, An approximation theory for strongly stabilizing solutions to the operator LQ Riccati equation, Proc. 40 th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Orlando, Florida, USA, 2001, p.123-128.
    5. R.F. Curtain, Reciprocals of regular linear systems: a survey. Proc. MTNS 2002, South Bend, Indiana, USA (CDROM or www.nd.edu/ mtns).
    6. R.F. Curtain and A.J. Sasane, Explicit formulas for J-spectral factors for well-posed linear systems. Proc. MTNS 2002, South Bend, Indiana, USA (CDROM or www.nd.edu/ mtns).
    7. M. Opmeer and R.F. Curtain, LQG-balancing in infinite dimensions Proc. MTNS 2002, South Bend, Indiana, USA (CDROM or www.nd.edu/ mtns).
    8. R.F. Curtain, Recent results on reciprocals of well-posed linear systems. Proc. MED'03, 11 th Mediterranean conference on Control and Automation, Rhodes, Greece, IV10-02, 2003. (CDROM).
    9. O.V. Iftime, R.F Curtain and H.J. Zwart, A classification of the Algebraic Riccati equations for infinite-dimensional systems, Proceedings of the 42nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, Hawaii, USA, pp. 1836-1841, December 9-12, 2003 (CDROM).
    10. R.F. Curtain and M. Opmeer, The suboptimal Nehari problem for stable infinite-dimensional systems: bridging the gap. Proc. 16 th Symposium on Mathematical Theory of Networks and Systems, MTNS 2004. CDROM: ISBN 90-5682-517-8, Session WP5 (SYM-6).
    11. R.F. Curtain and M. Opmeer, Normalized coprime factorizations for state linear systems. Proceedings of the 5 th Asian Control Conference, Melbourne, IEEE, 2004. (CDROM)
    12. R.F. Curtain, Robustly stabilizing controllers with respect to left-coprime factor perturbations for irrational transfer functions, Proceedings of the 43 rd Conference on Decision and Control, The Bahamas, IEEE, p.1358-1363, 2004. (CDROM)
    13. R.F. Curtain, Reciprocals of integrated nodes. Proceedings of the 44 rd Conference on Decision and Control, Seville IEEE, 2005. (CDROM)

    Contributed chapters

    1. Ruth F. Curtain and Job.C. Oostveen, Normalized Coprime Factorizations for Strongly Stabilizable Systems, in Fritz Colonius, Uwe Helmke, Dieter Praetzel Wolters, Fabian Wirth (editors), Advances in Mathematical Systems Theory: a volume in honor of Diederich Hinrichsen, Birkhäuser, Boston, 2000, Chapter 13, p. 243-254.

    2. Ruth F. Curtain, George Weiss and Martin Weiss, Stabilization of irrational transfer functions with internal loop, p. 179-208 in Systems, Approximation, Singular integral operators and related topics, Int. workshop on operator theory and applications, IWOTA 2000. Eds., Alexander A. Borichev and Nikolai K. Nikolski, Vol. 129, 2001, in series Advances in operator Theory and Applications, Birkhäuser.
    3. Ruth F. Curtain, On model reduction for control design for distributed parameter systems, in Research Directions in Distributer Parameter Systems, Ralph Smith and M. Demetriou, (Editors), p.95 -121,SIAM, Philadelphia, 2003.




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