This proposal requests funds to support the inaugural Northeast Student Workshop on Nonlinear and Hybrid Control, to be held at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from Friday, April 1, through Saturday, April 2, 2005. The goal of the workshop is to offer educational opportunities to graduate students and junior researchers to learn about the latest developments in control systems research, particularly in emerging application areas; to present their research results; and to share and discuss ideas with their peers, as well as with faculty members from other universities. The proximity of the universities in the Northeast provides an excellent opportunity to realize this goal with minimal travel cost. Upon a successful initiation with the help of NSF funds, these workshops will be continued biannually. The intellectual merit of the proposed activity is that it will provide a stimulus for sustained research in control systems theory, as well as increased number of applications in other fields of science and engineering. The broad impact resulting from the proposed workshop will be the encouragement of a broader and more diverse group of students (than those who are already able to attend major conferences in the field) to pursue research careers.
