Multi-physical systems are the working ground of existing engineering and scientific study. Multi-physical systems are therefore fundamental and are learned and treated in different ways in various curricula in academia. Unfortunately, many of the methodologies which are taught are not able to uniformly describe finite and infinite dimensional systems, their interconnection and control.

This spring school starts from no previous knowledge other than standard basic academic undergraduate knowledge to introduce the students to the field of port-Hamiltonian systems modelling and control design. This is a unified way to model all physical systems is a unique way to treat simple electrical network as well as complicated interaction of 3D elasticity parts moving in a fluid model with Navier-Stokes equations via decomposition and interconnection. The power of port-Hamiltonian expressivity is really remarkable and the organizers of the school have reason to believe that physics will be taught with such tools in the future.

A real school!!

Often, so-called “summer schools” are more like workshops in which many different high level scientists present their current results and the cohesion is often missing. In this school we are really trying to do it differently by introducing even the mathematical concepts which will be used before actually using them. It will clearly not be possible to give a full breath of the field of port Hamiltonian systems, but after the school you will know all you need to deeply understand the advantages of this new paradigm to model and control physical systems.

There will be a few teachers to achieve the previously described role, but two evenings will be dedicated to keynotes of Arjan van der Schaft and Bernhard Maschke who pioneered this ground breaking new way to do modeling and control.