Automatic Control and Biological Systems

Systems Conversation with Denis Dochain, Université Catholique de Louvain

Biology is often identified as the science of this century (while physics was often considered as the one of the 20th century). Biology in the context of engineering covers a wide spectrum of topics with applications in the pharmaceutical industry, in the food industry, in the biopolymer industry, in environment (including waste and water treatment), in ecology, or in biomedicine. The interest of control engineers in biological systems dates back to the ‘70s when early works by people like Constantinides et al. or D’ans et al. were published. The objective of the present talk is to give an overview of the different issues related to the control of biological systems as briefly introduced above, to provide some key results, to emphasize the important difficulties when handling modelling and control of biological systems, and to present some key challenges and opportunities in the very important field.