On the morning of May 21, 2026, distinguished international scholar, former IFAC President, IEEE Fellow, IFAC Fellow, and Professor at Sapienza University of Rome, Alberto Isidori, was invited to visit South China University of Technology (SCUT). He delivered an academic lecture titled Pains and pleasures of nonlinear feedback stabilization in Conference Room 506 of the “Duxing Building”. This academic exchange was co-organized by the School of Automation Science and Engineering of SCUT, the Key Laboratory of Autonomous Systems and Network Control, Ministry of Education, and the Editorial Office of the journal Control Theory & Applications (Chinese).
At the beginning of the lecture, the host, Professor Hailong Pei, extended a warm welcome to Professor Alberto Isidori on behalf of the organizers and briefly introduced the professor's academic achievements. Subsequently, Professor Isidori began his speech, presenting a high-level academic feast focused on the field of nonlinear systems to the faculty and students present. A total of over 50 faculty members and students from the School of Automation and other schools attended the lecture. The venue was packed, and the academic atmosphere was strong.
In his academic report, Professor Alberto Isidori focused on introducing his research achievements in the field of nonlinear feedback stabilization and his profound insights into this field. The report reviewed the development history of this field over the past fifty years, mainly covering the following key aspects: feedback law design, deeply exploring how to design feedback laws to achieve global or local asymptotic stability of system equilibrium points and ensure the domain of attraction; starting from basic methods based on linearization, elaborating on the key roles of concepts such as normal forms, zero dynamics, and input-output stability in the state feedback stabilization design of single-input single-output (SISO) systems; regarding dynamic output feedback and the separation principle, discussing the stabilization problem under dynamic output feedback; addressing the challenges brought by model uncertainties, introducing methods to solve robustness problems using extended observers; the report finally briefly outlined relevant strategies for extending the above methods to multi-input systems and provided an outlook on future research directions in related fields.
Professor Alberto Isidori's report was solid and detailed, with insights and conclusions presented in an accessible manner, profoundly analyzing the difficulties and research context of nonlinear feedback stabilization. Combining his own years of research journey, he presented complex theoretical knowledge in a vivid way, greatly benefiting and inspiring all the faculty and students present. Afterwards, Professor Hailong Pei thanked Professor Alberto Isidori again on behalf of the organizers and opened a Q&A session with him.
During the interactive discussion session following the report, the faculty and students present actively asked questions and engaged in heated discussions with Professor Alberto Isidori on related research topics. Professor Isidori patiently answered the questions from the faculty and students and shared his valuable experience in scientific research and engineering practice. Finally, this academic exchange activity concluded successfully amidst warm applause from all the faculty and students present.
This academic lecture not only provided an opportunity for SCUT faculty and students to communicate face-to-face with a top international scholar but also injected new vitality into the university's research in the field of nonlinear system control. It is believed that under the inspiration of Professor Alberto Isidori, faculty and students in related fields will achieve more breakthroughs and progress on their scientific research paths.
