Bryce L. Ferguson
Current Institution: University of California, Santa Barbara
Email: blferguson@ece.ucsb.edu
Bio: Bryce L. Ferguson is a PhD student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara under the supervision of Jason R. Marden. Bryce received his AA in Mathematics from Santa Rosa Junior College in 2016, and his BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara in June 2018 and March 2020, respectively. He was a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award at the 2020 IEEE American Control Conference. Bryce’s research interests focus on the control and coordination of multi-agent systems including networked, cyber physical, and socio-technical systems.
Abstract: Understanding the Role of Information in the Control of Cyber-Physical Systems
The advent of new communication technologies has enabled the connection of previously independent processes which now form the basis of new, large-scale cyber-physical and socio- technical systems. Though this new, larger scale offers many opportunities, it also makes the task of designing feasible and effective control schemes much more difficult. My research studies how we can utilize information in the control of large-scale cyber-physical systems. I study this in two complementary paradigms: (1) the role of information at the design phase, and (2) information’s power to influence behavior. My work offers analytical understandings of the role of information in the context of models that provide insights to many different cyber-physical systems. I believe in a multidisciplinary approach and use tools from controls, optimization, and game theory to look for improvements with emerging technologies in transportation, robotic fleet management, resource allocation, social-networks, supply-chain management, and more.