A fully funded joint PhD position is available between Polytechnique Montreal, Canada, and the CNRS LAMIH laboratory at Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France (UPHF) in Valenciennes, France. The topic is distributed optimization and control of multi-agent systems, with a particular emphasis on the coordination of networked multi-robot systems. This research will investigate resource allocation problems and develop distributed optimization algorithms for cooperative multi-agent systems, leveraging tools from networked control systems, mean-field games, reinforcement learning and optimal transport. The proposed project will develop methodologies for the control of distributed large-scale systems composed of a large number of agents, whose distribution must be shaped to match them efficiently to a set of tasks.
Interested applicants should have a master's degree in engineering, applied mathematics, computer science, or a related field. A strong background in mathematical methods applied to an area such as control theory, robotics, dynamical systems, machine learning, signal processing, optimization, etc. is desirable.
Interested students are encouraged to send their application, as pdf file(s), to Profs. Defoort, Le Ny, Chen and Moulay at michael.defoort@uphf.fr, jerome.le-ny@polymtl.ca, emmanuel.moulay@univ-poitiers.fr，yiwen.Chen@uphf.fr.
An application should include:
1) A cover letter (maximum one page), stating your research interests and prior experience, and how they relate to the control of multi-agent systems;
2) A full CV;
3) Transcripts;
4) 1 or 2 samples of past contributions/publications (which could be unpublished project reports), in English or French, and for which the candidate is the main or sole author.
