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PROF. LAURENT BURLION
Expert in nonlinear control
Specialist in Spacecraft and flying machines from tiny drones to big aircraft
I am an Associate Professor at Rutgers University, NJ in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
Before that I was working for the French Aerospace Lab called ONERA in Toulouse, perhaps the best place to conduct aerospace research in Europe. There I managed several projects with French and European grants and worked in close collaboration with companies and laboratories such as Airbus and CNRS on advanced flight control laws.
Discover our tilt rotor quadrotor drone
HIGHLIGHTS
This new quadrotor drone is extremely agile. Compared to a conventional drone, it can move quickly without pitching or rolling.
We're building SPICEsat, the first nanosatellite with active fuel slosh mitigation
NEWS
May 2025. Prof. Burlion has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure effective on July 1st.
March 2025. Cecilia, Manuel, Anthony, and Tamar successfully presented their Master work!
January 2025. I presented the IFAC webinar "Chasing sloshing as a control educational experience"
November 2024. I gave a talk at UMBC, “Learning Aerospace Control Engineering by working on a Cubesat Mission to Mitigate Sloshing”
November 2024. We've been selected (again) by the Airforce to "design, build, and manufacture a nanosatellite" (UNP NS-12)
September 2024. Our chapter ‘Satellite Control’ for the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Systems and Control Engineering has now been published online.
Summer 2024. I gave a few talks. I'm particularly proud of the presentation entitled "Engaging Students in Control Engineering through Sloshing Experiments,” given at Bertinoro in Italy.
April 2024. I gave a talk at NYU
March 2024.
Agam Modasiya defended his M.S thesis, "Towards Robust-Safe Control of Multi-Rotor UAVs". Agam will join The Boring Company (Hyperloop) in May 2024!
January 2024.
I became an associate editor for the International Journal "Control Engineering Practice."
December 2023.
Manav Jadeja defended his M.S thesis, "Integrating Controls and CFD for the satellite sloshing problem". Manav will join SpaceX in January 2024!
Ashish Kumar Shakya (Ph.D student at IIT Roorkee) received the IEEE Control Systems Society Graduate Collaboration Fellowship in order to visit us in 2024.
Summer 2023. New NSF award! "Collaborative Research: Designs and Theory for Interval Contractors and Reference Governors with Aerospace Applications."
June 2023. So glad to meet an astronaut (Bob Behnken) at ACC 2023!
June 2023. I gave a talk at U.C Riverside
Springbreak 2023. I gave a few talks
(Centrale Supelec, TAU, Ensta Bretagne)
December 2022.
Rick Schieni successfully defended his Ph.D thesis, "Reference Governors for Systems with Polynomial Constraints: Theory and Extensions". Congratulations Dr. Schieni!
May 2022.
New collaborative project with Prof. E. Fridman "Advanced Time Delay Control Methods for Aerospace Autonomous Systems"
January 2022.
Guest speaker in the Innovation Chat of James Barrood. The clip highlights the future of drones.
New ONR project in collaboration with Prof. M. Malisoff (LSU)
October 2021.
New postdoctoral researcher. Welcome, Mohammad!
September 2021.
Three papers were accepted at the AIAA SciTech conference 2022.
August 2021.
Interview in the Daily Targum. “Rutgers professors speak on recent space launches, commercialization of space exploration”.
The Secretary of Commerce Raimondo visits our drone laboratory!
June 2021.
Interview with Prof. Burlion about his teaching award
May 2021.
Interview with Prof. Burlion. "Pushing aerospace systems to their limits for optimal performance"
April 2021.
Prof. Burlion receives the Provost award for excellence in teaching innovations!
Michael Higgins receives an award at the AIAA regional student conference!
March 2021.
Start of our internal "0-G testbench" project. Stay tuned...
October 2020.
Face Foundation Covid 19 relief grant: our "DareTeach" project has been selected!
September 2020.
Start of a new academic year and reopening of my drone laboratories!
Two papers were accepted at the AIAA SciTech conference 2021.
Summer 2020. New Journal paper
I. Rubio Scola, G.A. Guijarro Reyes, L.R. Garcia Carillo, J.P. Hespanha and L. Burlion, "A Robust Control Strategy with Perturbation Estimation for the Parrot Mambo Platform", accepted to IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.
May 2020. End of the academic year
Congratulations to all the undergraduate students who worked with me throughout this year.
You did a great job despite the lockdown!
Winter 2020. New Journal Papers
T. Cunis, J-P. Condomines and L. Burlion, "Sum-of-squares flight control synthesis for deep stall recovery", accepted to AIAA Journal of Guidance, Control and Dynamics.
T. Cunis, J-P. Condomines and L. Burlion, "Local stability analysis for large polynomial spline systems", accepted to Automatica.
December 2019. Habilitation (HDR)
I successfully defended my "habilitation" at ISAE-SUPAERO on Monday, December 9th, 2019
Fall 2019. New ARPA-E Grant
A consortium led by Rutgers receives ARPA-E Funding for Transformational Energy Technology. I am responsible for the development of a generic control module aimed at improving the performance and safety of floating wind turbines.
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