Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Analysis and control of large scale heterogeneous networks: scalability, robustness and fundamental limits

Objective

The proposed research will make a contribution towards the analysis and synthesis of large scale complex networks: fundamental theory will be developed and important applications will be addressed, by extending tools from control theory. Networks are present throughout the physical and biological world, but nowadays they also pervade our societies and everyday lives. Major challenges that will be addressed are:

I. The engineering of large scale heterogeneous networks that are guaranteed to be robust and scalable.

II. The reverse engineering of biological networks.

A distinctive feature of the networks we would like to engineer, which falls outside more traditional domains in systems and control, is that of scalability, i.e. the ability to guarantee robust stability for an arbitrary interconnection by conditions on only local interactions. The methodologies that will be developed will have a significant impact in various applications where scalability is important, such as data network protocols, group coordination problems and power distribution networks, as they can lead to network designs with guaranteed robustness, thus avoiding conservative schemes with poor performance. The proposed project will also make a contribution towards the reverse engineering of biological networks at the molecular level. Life in the cell is dictated by chance; noise is ubiquitous with its sources ranging from fluctuating environments to intrinsic fluctuations due to the random births and deaths of molecules. The fact that a substantial part of the noise is intrinsic provides a major challenge in control theoretic methodologies. How can feedback be used to suppress these fluctuations, what are the associated tradeoffs and limitations, and how does nature manage to handle these so efficiently? These are questions that will be addressed by developing tools for analyzing known configurations, but more importantly, by deriving fundamental limitations that hold for arbitrary feedback.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-STG - Starting Grant

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2015-STG

See all projects funded under this call

Host institution

THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 498 531,00
Address
TRINITY LANE THE OLD SCHOOLS
CB2 1TN Cambridge
United Kingdom

See on map

Region
East of England East Anglia Cambridgeshire CC
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 498 531,00

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0