Quantitative Bioscience at the University of Tennessee

Optimal Control

Optimal control has applications in many scientific fields, ranging from the physical sciences and engineering to economics and the social sciences. Optimal control theory is the science of maximizing the returns from and minimizing the costs of the operation of physical, social, and economic processes. Optimal control deals with the problem of finding a control law for a given system such that a certain optimality criterion is achieved. An optimal control problem is a set of differential equations describing the paths of the control variables that minimize cost.

	Department	Research Interests
Paul Armsworth Email	Ecology & Evolutionary Biology	Applications of mathematical modeling, statistics and optimization to inform conservation of biodiversity and the management of ecosystem services
Judy Day Email	Mathematics; Electrical Engineering & Computer Science	Mathematical modeling and control, dynamical systems, model predictive control, acute inflammation/immunology
Louis Gross Email	Ecology & Evolutionary Biology; Mathematics	Mathematical ecology. Director, NIMBioS; Director, The Institute for Environmental Modeling (TIEM)
Suzanne Lenhart Email	Mathematics	Optimal control, population and environmental models, natural resource modeling, disease models
Xiaopeng Zhao Email	Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering	Biommedical signal processing, medical informatics, dynamics and control, computational biology

NIMBioS
1122 Volunteer Blvd., Suite 106
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-3410
PH: (865) 974-9334
FAX: (865) 974-9461
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From 2008 until early 2021, NIMBioS was supported by the National Science Foundation through NSF Award #DBI-1300426, with additional support from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.