Background
Willems, January Camiel was born on September 18, 1939 in Bruges, Belgium, Electromech. engineering degree U. Gent, 1963.
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January Camiel Willems
Edit Profileengineer mathematician university professor
January Camiel Willems, Belgian mathematics professor Fellow Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (associate editor Transactions on Automatic Control 1971-1973); member Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Dutch Mathematics Society (governing bd.1982-1985), Dutch General Systems Society (Automatica Prize Paper 1987).
Education
He studied engineering at the University of Ghent, obtained the Master of Science Degree from the University of Rhode Island, and the Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in electrical engineering in 1968.
Career
He is most noted for the introduction of the notion of a dissipative system and for the development of the behavioral approach to systems theory. He was an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1968 to 1973. On February 1, 1973, he was appointed Professor of Systems and Control in the Mathematics Department of the University of Groningen.
In 2003 he became Emeritus Professor.
Afterwards, he became Guest Professor at the KU Leuven. He served terms as chairperson of the European Union Control Association and of the Dutch Mathematical Society (Wiskundig Genootschap).
He was managing editor of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Journal of Control and Optimization and as founding and managing editor of Systems & Control Letters. In his Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, Willems worked on input/output stability.
In an often cited 1972 paper he introduced the notion of a dissipative system.
This notion is a generalization of Lyapunov function to input/state/output systems The construction of the storage function, as the analogue of a Lyapunov function is called, led to the study of the linear matrix inequality (Light-Material Interactions) in control theory. Applied to linear-quadratic-Gaussian control, the construction of the storage function leads to the Kalman–Yakubovich–Popov lemma.
In the 1980s Willems worked on the geometric theory of linear systems, where he introduced the notion of almost invariant subspace.
Since the 1990s, he has devoted his interest to the development of the behavioral approach to systems theory and control. In the behavioral approach a dynamical system is simply viewed as a family of trajectories.
This approach avoids having to separate the system variables into inputs and outputs.
Achievements
Membership
Fellow Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (associate editor Transactions on Automatic Control 1971-1973). Member Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Dutch Mathematics Society (governing bd.1982-1985), Dutch General Systems Society (Automatica Prize Paper 1987).
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Born
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Died
August 31, 2013 (aged 73) -
Nationality
Belgium