The SENER Foundation presents the award for the Best Doctoral Thesis in Engineering to Jorge Muñoz, PhD from UC3M

The jury noted the quality of the thesis, which provides valuable and potentially significant results. The thesis explores robust and adaptive control methods that, although initially applied in the field of robotics, can be used in any of the control subsystems needed in any high-level engineering project in the fields of infrastructure, energy, aerospace and even marine engineering.

At the award ceremony, the President of the SENER Foundation and President of SENER, Andrés Sendagorta, sought to underscore «the importance of collaboration between companies and universities in the development of scientific research as an engine for the development and progress of society. And in the case of engineering research, which is what we are recognizing in this award, an improvement in the environment and an improvement in people’s lives. In short, what engineering seeks is to bring scientific advances closer to society.”

Upon learning of the award, the author of the thesis expressed «my most sincere thanks to the SENER Foundation for offering this great opportunity, as well as to the jury, which has given us the award for the best doctoral dissertation in 2020. This award serves to recognize the effort made by the RoboticsLab research group at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid to develop robust and adaptive fractional controllers.”

For their part, the supervisors of the work stated that «applying fractional control to highly diverse systems offers greater flexibility when designing controllers, and provides increased robustness to the system being controlled. Without a doubt, this type of control is the standard nowadays, as evidenced by its numerous applications in fields such as robotics and process control, and many others.»

Through its Best Doctoral Thesis Award, the SENER Foundation aims to stimulate research at the highest level in the areas of science and technology in which the SENER group is active, namely, in the aerospace, infrastructure, energy and marine engineering sectors. The SENER Foundation has already announced the tenth edition of the Best Doctoral Thesis Awards for dissertations presented in 2021. Further information at https://www.fundacion.sener/en/excellence-in-engineering/research-awards/terms/