Mathias Hudoba de Badyn

About Me

I’m a RAIN lab alumnus, having received my PhD with Mehran Mesbahi in 2019. Since then, I’ve moved on to a postdoctoral scholar position at ETH Zurich at the Automatic Control Laboratory with John Lygeros and Roy Smith, and my new website is located here. The website you are currently reading is no longer updated. In 2014, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in physics and math. I joined Mehran’s group in fall of the same year.

 

Outside of my research life, I enjoy playing tennis and drinking coffee. I’m currently working on an Arduino-based coffee roaster with a model-predictive temperature controller. I also build guitars, and worked at the Larivée guitar factory in Vancouver for a short time when I was in high school.

e-mail: hudomath@uw.edu

Education

  • Postdoctoral Scholar, ETH Zurich (2019-present)
  • PhD Candidate in Aeronautics and Astronautics (2019)
  • Master of Science in Mathematics, Optimization Option (2019)
  • BSc. Combined Honours in Physics and Mathematics, University of British Columbia (2014)

Research Interests

Broadly speaking, my research is on the control and estimation of networked dynamical systems. Such systems appear everywhere in both nature and engineering, for example in swarms of robotic vehicles, social networks, gene networks, animal flocking and spacecraft formation flight. My focus is on networked systems that have an intrinsic state-dependent graph structure, meaning that the dynamical process on the network changes the communication links between agents in the network. Such processes are highly nonlinear and are difficult to analyze with standard techniques. Pretty much all real-world networked systems are state-dependent. The goal of my research is to find methods of analysis that allow one to formulate controllers and estimators for such state-dependent networked systems.

In my previous life as an undergraduate student at the University of British Columbia, I worked at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics under the supervision of James Owen. We studied how X-ray heating contributes to the dispersal of protoplanetary discs. I also had the good fortune to work with Richard Marchand and Richard Sydora at the University of Alberta, where we worked on how to use electrodynamics space tethers for removing radiation belts around the Earth. In my final year, I did two Honours theses. I worked with Greg Martin on the Hilbert-Pólya and pair-correlation conjectures, and with Joanna Karczmarek’s string theory group studying the geometry of membranes emerging from the Berenstein-Dzienkowski Hamiltonian.

Publications

Papers

    • M. H. Matheny, J. Emenheiser, W. Fon, A. Chapman, A. Salova, M. Rohden, J. Li, M. Hudoba de Badyn, M. Pósfai, L. Duenas-Osorio, M. Mesbahi, J. P. Crutchfield, M. C. Cross, R. M. D’Souza, M. L. Roukes, “Exotic states in a simple network of nanoelectromechanical oscillators”, Science, (363)6431, 2019
    • M. Hudoba de Badyn and M. Mesbahi, “Efficient computation of H2 performance on series-parallel networks”, To appear in Proc. American Control Conference, Philadelphia, USA, 2019, pp. 1–6. arxiv:1903.05325
    • M. Hudoba de Badyn, U. Eren, B. Açıkmeşe, M. Mesbahi. Optimal mass transport and kernel density estimation for state-dependent networked dynamic systems. In Proc. of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 2018.  arxiv:1809.07496
    • T. Reynolds, K. Kaycee, B. Barzgaran, M. Hudoba de Badyn, S. Rice, E. Hansen, A. Adler, B. Açıkmeşe, M. Mesbahi. Development of a Generic Guidance Navigation & Control System for Small Satellites: Application to HuskySat-1. AIAA SPACE 2018
    • M. Hudoba de Badyn, S. Alemzadeh, M. Mesbahi. Controllability and Data-Driven Identification of Bipartite Consensus on Nonlinear Signed Networks. In Proc. of the 2017 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. arxiv:1709.06679 
    • S. Alemzadeh, M. Hudoba de Badyn, M. Mesbahi. Controllability and Stabilizablity Analysis of Signed Consensus Networks. In Proc. of the 2017 IEEE Conference on Control Technology and Applications. arXiv:1707.01964
    • U. Lee, T. P. Reynolds, B. Barzgaran, M. Hudoba de Badyn, J. Chrisope, A. Adler, K. Kaycee, M. Mesbahi. Development of Attitude Determination and Control Subsystem for 3U CubeSat with Electric Propulsion. AIAA SPACE 2017.
    • M. Hudoba de Badyn, M. Mesbahi. Large-scale distributed Kalman filtering via an optimization approach. (2017). IFAC-PapersOnLine 50.1 (2017): 10742-10747. arXiv:1704.03125
    • M. Hudoba de Badyn, M. Mesbahi. Growing Controllable Graphs via Whiskering and Submodular Optimization. (2016) In Proc. of the 55th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. arXiv:1609.08733.
    • M. Hudoba de Badyn, R. Marchand, R. D. Sydora. Using Orbital Tethers to Remediate Geomagnetic Radiation Belts. (2016) J. Geophys. Res-Space 121: 1114-1123.
    • M. Hudoba de Badyn, A. Chapman, M. Mesbahi. Network Entropy: A System-Theoretic Perspective. (2015) In Proc. of the 54th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, pp. 5512-5517.
    • M. Hudoba de Badyn, J. L. Karczmarek, P. Sabella-Garnier, K. Huai-Che Yeh. Emergent geometry of membranes. (2015) JHEP 2015:89.
    • M. Hudoba de Badyn, A. Tahir. Orbital Electromagnetic Field Generators as a Method for Removing Small and Untrackable Space Debris. AIAA SPACE 2015.
    • J. E. Owen, M. Hudoba de Badyn, C. J. Clarke, L. Robins. Characterizing thermal sweeping: a rapid disc dispersal mechanism. (2013) MNRAS 436 (2): 1430-1438.

Conference Abstracts

Undergraduate Theses

    • M. Hudoba de Badyn. On the Hilbert-Pólya and Pair Correlation Conjectures. UBC cIRcle Archive (January 1, 2014)
    • M. Hudoba de Badyn. Born-Infeld Action Geometries. UBC cIRcle Archive. (May 1, 2014)

Teaching

Teaching Assistantships

  • AA/EE/ME 597: Networked Dynamic Systems (UW – Spring 2016)
  • AA 448: Control Systems – Sensors and Actuators (UW – Winter 2016)
  • AE 519: Special Topics in Aerospace Engineering: Controls – Optimal Control and Estimation (UW – Autumn 2015)
  • Math 110: Differential Calculus (UBC – Terms 1&2 2012/13)
  • Math 101/207: Integral Calculus with Applications to Physical Sciences and Engineering (UBC – Term 2 2012)

Awards

    • NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship – Doctoral (Offered); NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship – Doctoral (Held, 2017)
    • Conference on Decision and Control Travel Award (2016)
    • Dean’s Fellowship, Faculty of Engineering at the University of Washington (2014). Comprised of:
        • Alfred & Geraldine Cohn Fellowship
        • Louis & Katherine Marsh Fellowship
        • Max E. Gellert Fellowship
    • American Physical Society Department of Plasma Physics Travel Grant (2014)
    • John Collison Memorial Scholarship in Mathematics and Aeronautics, University of British Columbia (2014)
    • University Physics Contest, Bronze Medal (2013)
    • Walter Gage Memorial Grant (2013)
    • University of Alberta Research Experience Grant in Space & Plasma Physics (2013)
    • Summer Student Grant, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (2012)
    • Seanna and Nicole Strongman Memorial Scholarship (2010)
    • President’s Entrance Scholarship, University of British Columbia (2010)
    • Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences Prize, GVRSF (2010)
    • Bronze + Silver Medal, Senior Physics and Mathematics, GVRSF (2009-2010)
    • Fermat, Cayley and Euclid Medals. University of Waterloo Mathematics Contests (2008-2010)