Top cybernetics scholar visits Yunnan University

Brian D.O. Anderson, a well-known cybernetician, delivers a lecture at Yunnan University. [Photo/ynu.edu.cn]

A world-famous scholar in the field of cybernetics delivered a lecture at the School of Software of Yunnan University (YNU) on March 27.

Professor Brian D.O. Anderson, an academic from the Royal Society, Australian Academy of Science, and the United States’ National Academy of Engineering, came at the invitation of Doctor Chu Xing of YNU.

Yao Shaowen, dean of the School of Software, met with the esteemed scholar, offering him a warm welcome and lavishing praise on his achievements.

He said that Anderson’s visit would further promote YNU’s cooperation with foreign academia, and expressed his desire for Anderson to visit YNU more frequently and provide guidance for teachers and students. 

Anderson delivered a lecture entitled “The Mathematics of Formation Control” to 1,412 teachers and students. 

In his lecture, Professor Anderson outlined his new research in the field of network control, including things like formation control, graph stiffness theory, and location techniques of distributed targets.

Brian D.O. Anderson currently serves as professor emeritus at the Australian National University, a fellow at the Australian Academy of Science and Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, a fellow of the Royal Society, and a foreign member of the United States’ National Academy of Engineering.

In 2016, Professor Anderson was honored with the John R. Ragazzini Award by the American Automatic Control Council (AACC), becoming one of the few non-US winners. 

He has made significant research contributions related to circuits, signal processing, and control, and his current work focuses on the distributed control of multi-agent systems, sensor network localization, and econometric modeling.

He has published 10 monographs and more than 800 papers, and is regarded as one of the world’s leading scholars in the area of cybernetics.

Two YNU teachers pose for a photograph with Professor Anderson (L) at Yunnan University. [Photo/ynu.edu.cn]