ABOUT DOUGLAS ALLAN

Name & Nickname: Douglas (Doug) Allan
Hometown: Omaha, NE
Previous Degrees & Where: BS in Chemical Engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Degree sought from UCSB and Progress (e.g., 4th yr): Fifth-year Chemical Engineering PhD Candidate
Interesting aside/fact/information about you: I am actually a University of Wisconsin-Madison student. I just live here.

FAVORITE THINGS

The Department: n/a
UCSB: It is much less urban than UW Madison.
Santa Barbara: The weather.

RESEARCH INFORMATION  

Research program (e.g.,Controls, CSP, EP): MPC and state estimation
Main Area of Research: Full information estimation, moving horizon estimation, i-IOSS
Research Interests (list of keywords): i-IOSS, state estimation, inherent robustness, infinite-horizon optimal control
Advisor / Lab or Group Name: James B. Rawlings
 

Master’s Thesis or Dissertation Title OR Topic (most recent): Model Predictive Control and Moving Horizon Estimation: Closing the Gap in Theory
Title of Most important publication to date and link to your CV or pub list: A Lyapunov-like Function for Full Information Estimation (Accepted for ACC 2019), https://sites.engineering.ucsb.edu/~jbraw/publications.htmlcontains many of my publications
What types of Financial Assistance have you received? (GSR, TA, Fellowships): n/a

RESEARCH 

Research Description – geared towards prospective grad students and industry/potential collaborators: Analysis of the situations in which optimization-based state estimation methods such as moving horizon estimation produce robustly stable estimators.
What do you find rewarding about your research?: It's really rewarding to turn a gap in theory, i.e., a situation in which we have not proven X is true, into a concrete counterexample, i.e., a system in which X is not true.
Collaboration: UCSB prides itself on its collaborative atmosphere. How do you collaborate with e.g., your advisor, and other faculty, groups, research areas, departments, students (in and outside your group)? What about outside of UCSB e.g., industry, other groups, faculty, and students?:  n/a

LIFE AS A GRADUATE STUDENT

How and why did you get into your area of research?
 In our undergrad Process Design class, my group produced a plant that was tightly heat-integrated. Everything worked at steady state, but it wasn't obvious that there were enough degrees of freedom to control the system. That situation of an underactuated systemsparked my interest in advanced control.

Why you selected the ECE Department and UCSB in regards to your research area? n/a
Thoughts on working in a group research environment and your experience working with an advisor: n/a

PERSONAL LIFE AS A GRAD STUDENT

Tell us about your quality of life as a graduate student. How do you balance school, work, social and family (if you have a family) life? n/a

Personal life in Santa Barbara. What is your social life like? Where do you live (Grad Student Housing, Family Housing, / Goleta / Downtown SB or ???? and why?).

What do you think about living in Santa Barbara? n/a

Tell us about what did you do this summer or plan to do next summer? Travel, research at UCSB, Intern, etc: n/a

Advice to prospective graduate students about all aspects of UCSB graduate student life (research, academics and personal): n/a