Mark Cannon

About me

I studied engineering as an undergraduate (MEng in Engineering Science) and completed a doctorate (DPhil) at the University of Oxford, graduating in 1993 and 1998. Between these I did a master’s degree (SM) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1995. Since 2002 I have been an Associate Professor in the Engineering Science Department and a Fellow of St John’s College. I am a member of the Oxford Control Group.

Research interests

My research is about designing feedback controllers for uncertain systems in order to optimize performance subject to constraints. Constraints are present in almost all control problems because of physical, environmental and economic operating restrictions. Controllers that optimize predicted future behaviour of a system can account for constraints explicitly, and this can provide significant improvements in performance and applicability. I am interested in the fundamental properties of constrained control strategies such as feasibility and closed-loop stability, as well as issues such as convexity and efficiency of computation, stochastic uncertainty and online model adaptation. Applications: power management in EVs and hybrid electric aircraft, trajectory optimization in VTOL aircraft, deep brain stimulation (DBS), bioprocess control.